Is it OK to play Arcane over Frost in WoD?

[supervixen]

I'm getting negative feedback about playing arcane in WoD. My raid leader wants me to play Frost, which I don't mind doing if it's going to be beneficial but, I love Arcane. Apparently Frost has way more mobility and higher dps. The only spell I see that is instant is Ice Lance? And I suppose the pet continually does damage.


Anyhoo - just wondering if anyone is planning on playing Arcane for Mythic or with just default to what SimCraft has posted for patchwork and main Frost.

Cheers

[Delete Me]

Heard in the grapevine:

Frost has amazing AOE for trash, cruddy single target, but better than Fire and Arcane.

Fire and Arcane are both subpar over all.

Again, I dont play one at 100. This is just what I've been reading on the forums.

[Goldielocks]

When procced and bomb is up, it does a lot more damage than frostbolt. It has great mobility because besides random procs, water jet gives 100% fingers when hit with frostbolt plus orb to give more. Basically just running around casting ice lance and doing good dmg.

The downside is that frostbolt is very weak, meaning when burst is over, you start sucking.

[Crackleslap]

When procced and bomb is up, it does a lot more damage than frostbolt. It has great mobility because besides random procs, water jet gives 100% fingers when hit with frostbolt plus orb to give more. Basically just running around casting ice lance and doing good dmg.

The downside is that frostbolt is very weak, meaning when burst is over, you start sucking.

*really badly.

Thought I'd add some flavour.

[Kanegasi]

My advice is to play Arcane if you like Arcane.

[Sheridanjohn]

Arcane will fall further behind with movement

[Goldielocks]

*really badly.

Thought I'd add some flavour.

I'd agree but frost burst is so good, that even though the other ppl in grp catch up, frost usually is top 3. At least it's been that way for me. The problem that I have with it right now is that I need to try on trash to even have good dps. On bosses that last awhile, I'm usually in a good spot.

[Lyaelan]

I am a huge arcane fanboi. I LOVE arcane.

I switched to frost two days ago, when I realized people 10 iLevels below me were outDPSing me.

Mages are just in a cruddy place at the moment.

[Deleted]

I've swapped to Arcane for the time being as I have a LOT of Mastery on my gear at the moment, the dps loss from swapping out of Frost feels for the most part pretty low. I'm still finishing >20k on heroic boss fights, and keeping ok-ish on trash. Supernova stronk, love seeing it crit for 100k+.

Much more enjoyable than Frost that's for sure. I just wish Fire would get those level 90 nerfs reverted already.

[Summer]

I'm really confused about the spec balance, as fire got massive nerfs after prepatch launch to tune for lvl 90 but these nerfs were never undone? Equally frost got some buffs and not all of it was nerfed back though frostbolt was(?). Basically I've been waiting for Blizz to rebalance the specs but it hasn't happened and now with a little over a week to go to raids opening it's making me nervous. don't want to go all out buying multistrike gear and enchants etc. if there's a good chance that it will get nerfed or one of the other specs buffed. Anyone have any insight to this?

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

No, absolutely not. You should be ashamed of yourself.

[Willfox]

Frost burst is AMAZING. DPS after opener is very meh, but the other 2 mage specs are like that all the time.

[Deleted]

It depends on what level of raiding you're doing and what you're most comfortable with.

I had a lot of mastery gear in my bags so tried Arcane out but tbh, it's just not as good as frost at the moment. Though, frost, if you get a bit of an unlucky streak and you're not really getting procs outside of water jet then your damage will drop big time. Frostbolt hits like a wet noodle and the 0.5 sec quicker cast time every 15 secs is pretty much useless tbh.

[Deleted]

I've swapped to Arcane for the time being as I have a LOT of Mastery on my gear at the moment, the dps loss from swapping out of Frost feels for the most part pretty low. I'm still finishing >20k on heroic boss fights, and keeping ok-ish on trash. Supernova stronk, love seeing it crit for 100k+.

Much more enjoyable than Frost that's for sure. I just wish Fire would get those level 90 nerfs reverted already.

have to quote. just 100% agree

[mcyclone]

i too am a devout arcane spec fan ever since our glory days in WotLK, and was really excited going into this expansion about the potential revival of the spec. i levelled to 100 in arcane and started dungeoning in arcane but i couldnt get over how underwhelming the lvl 100 talents were, and i never quite got that satisfaction that arcane promises. Then i switched to frost and i have been having a blast! i see a lot of people saying that frost single target dps is low but stack some multistrike and grab icy veins talent/glyph and you will win dps on almost all single target boss fights provided you make good use of icy veins. much less downtime then arcane, more cooldowns to work with and higher dps and the mobility omg.

when i gear up properly i will try arcane again, but im not getting my hopes up :C in the mean time though frost is fantastically fun

[D3athsting]

i too am a devout arcane spec fan ever since our glory days in WotLK, and was really excited going into this expansion about the potential revival of the spec. i levelled to 100 in arcane and started dungeoning in arcane but i couldnt get over how underwhelming the lvl 100 talents were, and i never quite got that satisfaction that arcane promises. Then i switched to frost and i have been having a blast! i see a lot of people saying that frost single target dps is low but stack some multistrike and grab icy veins talent/glyph and you will win dps on almost all single target boss fights provided you make good use of icy veins. much less downtime then arcane, more cooldowns to work with and higher dps and the mobility omg.

when i gear up properly i will try arcane again, but im not getting my hopes up :C in the mean time though frost is fantastically fun

I did the same too, lvled as arcane then switched to frost after looking at my terrible dps in normal lv100 dungeons...
P.s.: arcane orb is one of the most terrible end-tier talent ever made, i tried it for 10 minutes and said "woah blizz, are u f***ng kidding me?"

[isuridedes]

You are playing a video game. Play the class / spec / talents / way you want. If your raid leader has a problem, find another raid.

[Deleted]

atm frost does the better dps than arcane and fire.. why am i even mentioning fire... don't ever go there

ice floes should give you mobility and frost mage has a ton of proccin with insta spells meaning that you sometimes can just run and shoot three spells with instant cast

atm frost has incredible burst with cd's. like, it's insane
but after all your cd's and procs you are left with frostbolt spamming which is rly bad and gives you one of the worst single target dps in the game
in the end the burst and single target dps ends in a higher average dps than arcane and fire

but comming from someone who have mained frost mage for a while now.. since Dreanor frost mage is not fun to play anymore.
with removed spells and spells changes to passive it just feels like frostbolt is the only thing you have to cast (i don't count casting insta spell procs as a cast)

Taken from another forum post:

Frost: Extremely high burst and AOE damage, god awful single target damage. Mindnumbingly boring. Once your CDs are gone, you sit there casting one spell over and over. Frostbolt feels like it isn't doing anything. Frostbolt x 1000 and hope to god you get a proc.

[Deleted]

I often heard, that the frost opening burst is amazing.

Would someone be so kind and perfectly point out how it goes? Because I for sure doesn't have an AMAZING opener.

If you could write it in like
Pre-Pull
Frost bolt and stuff
pull
and then the GCDs it would be perfect.

For the moment I start with pre-pull frostbolt, HT/Icy veins, crystal, double ice nova or frost orb (depending if flow is high or low, I think nova on high stacks is better) -> spam procced lances on the crystal.

The burst isn't that impressive single target though. I burst maybe 35k-40k, which on top of everything is quickly cancelled out after like 10 seconds already.

[Deleted]

have to quote. just 100% agree

lol. I'm also at least going to enjoy playing a spec for the last week before raiding. Tuesday I'm back to being Frost and wanting to punt puppies. -_-