Confused mage LF help with spec.

[Komil]

Hello everyone.

I'm a mage at iLvl 554 who have killed 14/14 and just now joined a 25man guild for HC progress. So far I'm at 4/14 HC with Jugger on 17%.

I started playing the patch as Fire mage and got a lot of critgear, but after getting more and more into the patch, I notice less geared mages around me blowing the dps meter up as arcane/frost.

I have since then, respecced a lot between those 2 specs and can't really settle!

As Arcane I can get a maximum of 75% mastery raidbuffed with 24% haste.

As Frost I can get a maximum of 49% haste raidbuffed (unsure about mastery)

And as Fire I get 9100 haste cap + 49% crit.

I have 4pc but, I also have WF Damien's Ice-Vein Mask http://www.wowhead.com/item=105808
and I have WF Akolik's Acid-Soaked Robes http://www.wowhead.com/item=104308

At what point do you stop haste as frost? And what bomb at what time?

I dont get this.... Been fire all my life, and now this new thing come out and starts being viable


My mage is called "Veslemage". Here's a link to my armory: http://www.wow-heroes.com/character/...zak/Veslemage/

On that link, you can see logs from raid as arcane aswell


Hopefully someone can help me!

[Deleted]

I would kindly point you to the vast and very informative guides on Frost in this very forum. Especially Akraens advanced guide has a lot of information on how to play Frost, and what variations you can chose. It should give you most answers you seek on how to play and itemize a frost mage.

That being said, from a practical standpoint: Fire should be a very good specc, especially for later bosses. With 4pc, and the decent gear you have, it will only get stronger and stronger as you advance through the content. The later heroic bosses also call for a lot more movement, and can be tedious as Arcane. So don't disenchant your Fire gear

Apart from that, if you're set on playing Arcane or Frost: switch around and try for yourself. If you follow the Frost-discussions in here, you can see that full-haste isn't the only viable Frost-build, but only one alternative. In reality, you can easily take a mastery-heavy Arcane build (though I'd advise staying above 9762 haste) and easily swap between speccs as you see fit. I personally switch to Frosts on some farm-bosses that I find tedious as Arcane, or just to try it out, and for me personally the speccs are very very close together. You can use that to find out for yourself how it works in your specific case. Good luck and remember to also have some fun in between

[Henzington]

Arcane is best when you don't have to move and it is quite good if you position yourself properly but personally it is very boring spec to play.. Fire and frost both have a lot more mobility and frost can do a solid job with frost orb and cleaving. Frost/Arcane have the added advantage of similar gear as Ilya said where as fire takes crit then haste and lastly mastery.

[Komil]

Thanks for reply.

I have tried out frost, but with the 49% haste I had + BL, Berserking and MetaGem proc, I couldnt do shit but try to spam spells and hope my char casted them! So I was wondering if there was something else. And I'm also wondering at what point I should got NT over LB for singletarget. I've looked thru the frost guide from Akraen, but I got even more confused. Only thing I wonder about is how much haste I should go for and also keep my spells castable. And also what bomb I should go for at what point

[buffmageslol]

As others have said, if you have the 4pc and a large amount of crit while still hitting your haste breakpoint - there really isnt a reason to switch, especially for heroics. Fire is the preferred spec from a lot of players because you gain a lot of mobility with scorch and can throw out huge pyro crits while moving and also have your ignite dots to keep dps on boss if you are unable to cast for whatever reason.

that being said - i probably wouldn't change out of fire since as you get heroic gear it will scale very well and you already have the knowledge/experience playing it and pretty good gear already.

I currently do not have any crit gear really and I was super stoked to be able to play arcane and frost this tier so i jumped on that right away. If you did go that route - there are many ways to play frost: mastery - haste or mixed. I personally stay full out mastery everything with ~10k haste so I can play mostly arcane, but on fights that require more movement than im comfortable with or where i know i cannot sustain 4stacks (ie hopping on belts for blackfuse) i switch to frost and do some pretty damn good dmg, if not better than arcane for single target (i dont have the t15 4pc pre/post nerf). I personally prefer the mastery side of frost because with insane amounts of haste im just spamming buttons too often and over cast too many icelances and FFbolt procs, sop that sucks, and it isnt comfortable for my fingers lol. personally too with the mastery build i feel like my damage is pretty consistently high across the duration of fights, with less peaks and valleys of bursty segments. icicles and the pet are usually my top 2 damage spells.

Im sure you could probably stay fire, and then reforge between fights to the max haste you can get and try frost out if that was something you enjoyed, just for quality of life and fun playing the spec.

[Deleted]

To be pretty honest, all mages will usually preach for their own spec but as it is right now and at your progress there's 2 things that will determine which spec is the best :

1. Specific boss mechanics, favouring one spec or the other, be it by their damage output or spec toolkit.
2. Your own performance and capability with a spec.

The 3 mage specs have never been as well balanced as they are today so if you feel comfortable with one spec more than another, I'd say go for it.

Oh! Also on farm bosses, arcane will be able to cheese a lot more than other spec by multidotting to pad metters, so don't get fooled ! Then again when it's farm night might as well enjoy your epeen

[Zavri]

Play whatever you will pull more dps as. Fire isn't bad so if you're geared for it, play fire.

[Komil]

Hey folks!

Thanks for all the good response to my question. You've been much helpful. I've been trying out frost and arcane now for 2 raids, and I'm doing more as arcane per now, but I'll test out Fire over the weekend and see how I feel about that. I just got accepted on a trial, so I want to be pushing myself to the limit of what I can do. Per now, I've been destroying the other mages, so thats good

Anyways, good thing about being Fire is that mostly gear that suits fire, no one else needs. Looks like everyone want haste/mastery gear now a days, maybe easier for me to get BiS items!