SoO best spec

[Kenbud]

I, sir, am not trolling. Frost is more competitive than people seem to think. I'm not saying everyone has to play Frost but I am saying that you CAN play Frost on every boss and be competitive. Haste build is looking to be better than a hybrid of haste/mastery.

I agree that people write it off but for the majority of SoO Fire/Arcane leave it in the dust. I love frost, its my favorite spec but in a 25 man raid where snares and roots aren't as necessary then the dps gap is just a detriment.

[mrgreenthump]

I, sir, am not trolling. Frost is more competitive than people seem to think. I'm not saying everyone has to play Frost but I am saying that you CAN play Frost on every boss and be competitive. Haste build is looking to be better than a hybrid of haste/mastery.

More competitive than people does not equal best mage spec. But then again this thread is bound to fail as any data we get can be thrown out just as we get it as the bosses are new, tactics are evolving and the data we start to get 2 weeks from now is starting to show the real truth, that said if there is a big cap we will see it already. Just saying frost does good damage though does not mean arcane or fire wouldn't be better with optimal gear for those specs.

[Deleted]

We had not anywhere enough raids and opinions yet to really come to a conclusion on this, but the problem with Frost right now seems to be that anything it can do, Arcane can basically do just as well or better. With the single, obvious exception of Thok, I have seen nothing so far that would really benefit Frost massively.

Arcane is mostly ahead or even for multidotting, there is no real "cleave 2 targets only"-fight, and in straight AoE I'm not quite sure yet. I did great with Frost on Galakras, but the Arcane Mage did just as well. As soon as we reach straight single-target, Arcane seems to pull ahead quite a bit. I'm leaving out Fire here because it's strengths and weaknesses are distributed differently (and lets not talk about the scaling...), whereas the other two speccs seem closer together, with Arcane simply outperforming Frost in most areas.

Now, that being said, I have found Frost to be much more competetive then I thought it would be. I also believe it might be more beneficial to your raid in some situations (especially in 10 man), and no one should write it off at all. But if the question is "what should I play on SoO progression", I'd say give Arcane a go. If you feel you don't like it, by all means switch back to Frost, and remember to ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS play the specc you feel you perform best with. This is still a game after all, and if you don't like playing in a certain specc, then don't. Frost is a viable option right now, and will continue being one in all but the most competetive of guilds.

[Vorg]

I, sir, am not trolling. Frost is more competitive than people seem to think. I'm not saying everyone has to play Frost but I am saying that you CAN play Frost on every boss and be competitive. Haste build is looking to be better than a hybrid of haste/mastery.

So the reforge will be hit cap>haste>mastery>crit?

What about gems ?

[ssviolett]

Arcane is just awesome. We made it to Dark Shamans yesterday and on every boss Arcane was rocking. Heavy single target dps, heavy cleave ability with ABarr (up to 3m per hit), incredible aoe (nt+ae). You no longer need to rely on your luck to get good combustion. I was able to achieve 250k dps on Sha of Pride with 540 ilvl, some mistakes in rotation and constant running to prisons.
At least for normal fights you mostly stay on one place in your rune, moving out of shit (thanks to new rune radius)

[Deleted]

Arcane is just awesome. We made it to Dark Shamans yesterday and on every boss Arcane was rocking. Heavy single target dps, heavy cleave ability with ABarr (up to 3m per hit), incredible aoe (nt+ae). You no longer need to rely on your luck to get good combustion. I was able to achieve 250k dps on Sha of Pride with 540 ilvl, some mistakes in rotation and constant running to prisons.
At least for normal fights you mostly stay on one place in your rune, moving out of shit (thanks to new rune radius)

Agreed. Arcane is really good although I played fire yesterday, but another mage of my guild did arcane and we were on a par. Good to see.

[Imnick]

I, sir, am not trolling. Frost is more competitive than people seem to think. I'm not saying everyone has to play Frost but I am saying that you CAN play Frost on every boss and be competitive. Haste build is looking to be better than a hybrid of haste/mastery.

Again, this is not a "what specs are fine to play" topic.
Frost is definitely fine to play.
It is a "what spec is literally the best".

Frost isn't that.

[Pyromelter]

I'd just like to chime in, I'm going to opine that fire was, is, and will be the best.

While some people can level and gear 2 mages specifically for their spec, and others will carry around tons of gems and tomes to reforge/respec all the time, the vast majority of people don't do this. The question then is, which of the 2 is better overall for progression raiding?

Considering the amount of movement in many SoO fights, I'm having a very hard time seeing how arcane can be viable on most fights (with some exceptions of course). And if you aren't going to regem/re-enchant/re-forge for every fight, fire is going to be the way to go.

If you are in a world progression top 50 type situation, this thread does not matter to you. Because you would be the kind of person that would have 2 full sets of gear or 2 characters with full sets of gear, or would be re-speccing between every fight.

This is my opinion, of course, that fire is best - I could still be proven wrong. There is not enough hard data to tell which spec is best at the moment, and as far as I can tell there are no logs up on WoL to be able to sift through the data.

Edit: All I can say from my personal experience is that fire is very, very good. The combustion nerf certain hurt, but going back to the basic crit>haste>mastery has helped sustained dps an helped dps in other ways through faster casts

[Hasted]

Considering the amount of movement in many SoO fights, I'm having a very hard time seeing how arcane can be viable on most fights (with some exceptions of course). And if you aren't going to regem/re-enchant/re-forge for every fight, fire is going to be the way to go.

We're currently up to Spoils of War, and the only fight that I had any issues as Arcane on was Iron Juggernaut. Although this may have been due to our strat, we 1 shot it so I didn't really have an abundance of time to flesh out how to optimize my DPS with dealing with the oil and rockets.

The issue with Arcane is that it currently relies on T15 4 set; which means that in all likelihood they will have to buff T16 4 set to compensate or nerf T15 4 set. So if yo have yet to acquire 4-5 heroic T15 pieces you will eventually have a sizable disadvantage in stats. If they do end up nerfing T15 Arcane may end up in a much weaker spot, but that's mainly speculation.

[Kenbud]

Few people has some technical difficulties so we were only able to get Naz, Mal and Spoils down tonight but I can without a doubt say Arcane wins hands down on Naz and Spoils and unless you get very unlock with the smash or knock up Arcane wins Mal also. Got like 3 attempts on the T-Rex but from what Iv seen overall either fire or arcane will be about equal for this fight.

[voltaa]

So, my opinion after our first 14/14 clear lasr night, is arcane, there is hardly movement this tier and fire just doesn't have the gear to compete with arcane at this point, I do believe fire will pull ahead at the end of the tier, but starting heroics next week, I think many mages will be arcane, I know that 3/4 mages in my raid group are.

[oraz4000]

So, my opinion after our first 14/14 clear lasr night, is arcane, there is hardly movement this tier and fire just doesn't have the gear to compete with arcane at this point, I do believe fire will pull ahead at the end of the tier, but starting heroics next week, I think many mages will be arcane, I know that 3/4 mages in my raid group are.

Are you running ROP exclusively or switching to IW per fight?

[Deleted]

Arcane seems to be doing more damage at the moment however this will change with more gear. Arcane was actually pretty on par with Fire in ToT so after the Combustion nerf it is understandable that Arcane is doing better at present.

[Kenbud]

Arcane seems to be doing more damage at the moment however this will change with more gear. Arcane was actually pretty on par with Fire in ToT so after the Combustion nerf it is understandable that Arcane is doing better at present.

So you saying Arcane is currently ahead but fire is going to pass it? Thing is that fire bis is actually a crit loss from last tier due to 1900 cirt loss from Cha-yee and reforge Crit from Breath/Woosh. On the other hand Arcane will gain a considerable amount of mastery, probably going over 100%, so i dont see where fire will pass arcane.

[Hasted]

So you saying Arcane is currently ahead but fire is going to pass it? Thing is that fire bis is actually a crit loss from last tier due to 1900 cirt loss from Cha-yee and reforge Crit from Breath/Woosh. On the other hand Arcane will gain a considerable amount of mastery, probably going over 100%, so i dont see where fire will pass arcane.

We lose flat rating but in full 2/2 Heroic gear we end up with an additional 2% crit from int scaling (variable depending on itemization). Fire does end scale just fine with intellect, so the difference might not be quite as large as everyone seems to believe. Due to the 4pc we will inherently be getting more crits due to its RNG smoothing, and the 7-9% crit damage from the Immerseus trinket will certainly help things out quite a bit.

My best guess is that both will be fairly close, with niche differences based on fight mechanics and strats.

I'll wait to comment on Frost until I've had a chance to see more information on it.

[Boxedwaffle]

I, sir, am not trolling. Frost is more competitive than people seem to think. I'm not saying everyone has to play Frost but I am saying that you CAN play Frost on every boss and be competitive. Haste build is looking to be better than a hybrid of haste/mastery.

As one of the more dominant frost mages from last tier, it grieves me to say this, but frost isn't competitive.

[Frostyspeed]

Im not gonna start a mage war here; so ill just state this as an OPINION, subjective.
My guild did 8/14 yesterday, 2 wipes on galakras, 1 wipe on dark shaman, 1 wipe on nazgrim.
I played arcane on every fight. I personally think arcane will be top, the dps it does is ridiculous. Arcane was top in 5.4 in terms of patchwerk, but movement was its achilles heel. Fortunately, the new rune of power removes the problem with micro movement. I did 280k dps on Iron Juggernaut with 545 ilevel. Im still trying to get used to the new rune of power, its just weird not actually being in the rune but still getting the buff (yes i know theres a ripple effect), so i could be better. Also optimising dps/movement etc.
Fire is competitive id say with more gear when mastery gets higher and combustions go back to what they were in ToT (100k combustions etc).

[voltaa]

Are you running ROP exclusively or switching to IW per fight?

RoP exclusively, haven't used IW (in raid) since my first time going arcane on tortos

[Kiry]

I'm going to stay in frost for the first full week. Not only am I doing good/competitive dps, it fits my play style. Perhaps next week I'll try arcane. We're currently 7 bosses cleared.

[Manhands]

Here's arcane's current playstyle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg7sDhl6iHI