What spec is the best atm?

[Kimpan]

Hey!

So I am going to start playing on my Mage, however.. what spec is currently the best?
According to http://www.noxxic.com/wow/dps-rankings#666,real,1 fire seems to be ahead, however, reading around.. it seems that fire is the weakest?


So what spec is suggested to play with lower gear? Reason I ask is because gearing is a hell for us mages >.< So buying with my conquest is a commitment.

[yookstah]

Don't listen to noxxic - p much rubbishcan69420

I would advise playing frost. It is very simple in its execution, and a lot of pieces in highmaul have multistrike on it so it is relatively easy to get. It performs well on Butcher and other fights with cleave/mobility depending on talent choices. Frost works at every gear level.

[Deleted]

At low gear lvls i definately recommend going frost, however fire becomes fun and viable at around 650+ ilvl perhaps even a bit sooner for fights like tectus.

Basically all 3 specs are in a pretty good place atm, arcane is the king of single target, fire being the king of cleave and aoe and frost being the jack of all trades doing everything pretty darn good.

[Kimpan]

At low gear lvls i definately recommend going frost, however fire becomes fun and viable at around 650+ ilvl perhaps even a bit sooner for fights like tectus.

Basically all 3 specs are in a pretty good place atm, arcane is the king of single target, fire being the king of cleave and aoe and frost being the jack of all trades doing everything pretty darn good.

Alright, thanks for the advices both of you!

The thing is.. I enjoy fire the most, but I want to do as much DPS as possible.
But gearing up I gotta do gear choices, so if I can go fire.. I will gear for that and that gear will suck for frost / arcane

[Deleted]

Alright, thanks for the advices both of you!

The thing is.. I enjoy fire the most, but I want to do as much DPS as possible.
But gearing up I gotta do gear choices, so if I can go fire.. I will gear for that and that gear will suck for frost / arcane

You're right. Gearing up for a certain spec certainly will not favor the other two specs the same way. Especially with frost you'll have lots of multistrike which isn't as great for both arcane/fire.
Right now Arcane seems to be the best spec, not considering single fights in Highmaul. But at this point it all comes down to personal preference: Do I want to play what's the most fun to me or do I want to do the best possible dps?
I would recommend you to try Arcane for now. I recently switched from frost and it's actually pretty enjoyable. I used to hate it in TOGC back in Wrath and therefore didn't quite want to switch at first. But now that I've played it for a while I've come to like it.

[Kimpan]

How big of a diffrence between the 3 specs are there overall?

Like

Fire: 40k dps
Frost: 35k dps
Arcane: 38k dps

or so ?

[Wrathorian]

How big of a diffrence between the 3 specs are there overall?

Like

Fire: 40k dps
Frost: 35k dps
Arcane: 38k dps

or so ?

Cant really judge it like that. Some encounters are better for fire, some better for arcane etc.

Fire is pretty ahead on Twins and Tectus. Arcane is good at Brackenspore ( blue shrooms op ) and Butcher. Frost is better at rest.

[Polarthief]

Arcane: Best single-target in the game, but only if you can stand still (garbage mobility)
Fire: Ridiculous scaling and great cleave, but very poor single-target until you get more gear (also very low DPS on the move unless you get a lucky string of crits, but more mobile than Arcane)
Frost: Great AoE, mobility, and even low geared single-target DPS, but doesn't scale as well as Fire and Arcane.

If you're not in full Mythics for Fire nor do you think you can pull off Arcane, Frost for sure is the go-to spec. Come BRF, you may have more options, assuming nothing gets nerfed (because Arcane and Fire most likely will be).

- - - Updated - - -

Cant really judge it like that. Some encounters are better for fire, some better for arcane etc.

Fire is pretty ahead on Twins and Tectus. Arcane is good at Brackenspore ( blue shrooms op ) and Butcher. Frost is better at rest.

For sure for sure, which is why the sims aren't a good representation unless you're looking just at Butcher.

PS: Frost can easily beat Fire on Twins if the tanks can stack them up in a 2y radius for Splitting Ice to trigger. Frost 2-target cleave > Fire 2-target cleave, plus Frost is the most mobile, which helps a lot.

[Wrathorian]

Yeah you may be right, I just really like Fire so I generally end up doing more dps with it on Twins. Havent given frost a decent chance on Twins yet - gonna try it this week tho.

[Ham on Rye]

How big of a diffrence between the 3 specs are there overall?

Like

Fire: 40k dps
Frost: 35k dps
Arcane: 38k dps

or so ?

A lot of that depends on you. Some fights are better for some specs than others. Some players play one spec better than the other two. ANd the stats you have on gear pieces could make a spec better than another.

Try them all and see.

[Polarthief]

Yeah you may be right, I just really like Fire so I generally end up doing more dps with it on Twins. Havent given frost a decent chance on Twins yet - gonna try it this week tho.

To be fair, I just did some testing using my Frost gear, and I got nearly 20k as Fire and 23.3k as Frost. This is using Multistrike>Haste/Crit gear, and I haven't played Fire in awhile, so it's really not too terrible.

Honestly, you'll end up doing more DPS with the spec you enjoy/know the most, assuming your gear isn't completely terrible for the spec. The only problem though is that HM is littered with MS gear, and BRF has tons of Mastery and Crit gear, so it'll not only be a higher iLevel, but it'll be very poorly itemized for Frost. This problem should ease a bit in T18 when we have equal fucking iLevel gear for the whole tier >_>;

[Deleted]

Well fire is absolutely garbage on single target, at least around this tiers ilvl. Frost/Arcane is probably the best choice for highmaul. If you had gear for all specs the spread would look something like this:
Kargath, butcher, brakenspore --> Arcane
Twins, korgah, Imp --> frost
Techtus --> Fire

The difference between frost and arcane is somewhat minimal on most of the fights, so it pretty much comes down to planning and familiarity with the specs.

I myself play arcane for everything cause I never liked frost and fire being shit (especially with the complete lack of crit gear).

[flinchy]

on a single target patch like fight it's more like

Arcane>Frost>Fire, with maybe 5% between each

with movement it's frost on top, with many targets it's fire on top - in highmaul bracken is the only movement fight where in theory arcane>all by miles

however, frost has the simplest rotation, even when i sim like 2.5k higher dps in arcane, it's more like 2.5k lower in reality.

[Daeth]

Here's the perspective you are always going to hear that overall single target damage goes from:

Arcane > Frost > Fire

Movement heavy fights favor Frost over Arcane and cleave/AoE fights will favor Fire.

The only issue is realistically every spec is available for play regardless of sims and what people think HOWEVER the biggest factor amongst these specs and what is the "best" realistically breaks down into gear. With Highmaul gear there is a lot of multistrike available and Frost is generally the more "easier" spec to play so people tend to do better with that. With more gear, Arcane/Fire are an option however Arcane is much stronger imo as movement heavy fights don't technically impair Arcane because you can swap to Incanter's Flow and you'll lose a bit of DPS but nothing dramatic enough to declare Frost a stronger spec. The only issue with being Arcane that is if you choose to go Arcane that means swap all your enchants to mastery ones, so it's a 15k-ish gold commitment and playing Frost as your offspec with mastery enchants is a big no-no since mastery is garbage for frost. But you can do it vice versa, if you like Frost and would like to play Arcane on fights such as Butcher then go Frost with multistrike enchants and have Arcane be your offspec, you'll only run into issues where you'll probably want to play Fire for tectus and crit is your best stat but swapping gear/trinkets would work for this since you'll only really play fire here unless you have great gear for it (Mythic) in anticipation of BRF.

So overall all specs are playable, Frost is better at lower levels and into low Mythic but as you get more geared Arcane becomes stronger and when you become more optimized, Fire is do-able on any fight that is 2+ targets in Mythic. I would start out as Frost and move to an Arcane/Fire build at 672+ ilevel or remain Frost if you can play it better/have better stats for it.

[Polarthief]

on a single target patch like fight it's more like

Arcane>Frost>Fire, with maybe 5% between each

It's definitely more like 10-20%. You shouldn't be dropping 3-6k based on what spec you pick (granted, that's a lack of gear options issue, but still, it's at least 10% which is way too much)

in highmaul bracken is the only movement fight where in theory arcane>all by miles

Kargath (non-Mythic)? Butcher? Those fights were MADE for Arcane! Also, heaven forbid you're put on Flamethrower duty because then you're worthless as Arcane.

however, frost has the simplest rotation.

Uh... Fire's definitely more simple, and I'd even argue Arcane isn't complex once you know the right time to cast stuff. Frost is more easy to learn, hard to master, while Arcane is the pure opposite, and Fire is just stupidly easy to learn and not hard at all to master

[flinchy]

It's definitely more like 10-20%. You shouldn't be dropping 3-6k based on what spec you pick (granted, that's a lack of gear options issue, but still, it's at least 10% which is way too much)

just going by the sims, depending on gear level it changes. at 695 it's (from memory now) 6% and 8%. at 650-670 the difference is even greater. really large gap for fire at least (dat lack of crit)

Kargath (non-Mythic)? Butcher? Those fights were MADE for Arcane! Also, heaven forbid you're put on Flamethrower duty because then you're worthless as Arcane.

i said movement fight, sorry for not being clearer. Kargath/butch are both stand still. i know arcane SHOULD do better, i'm just not used to arcane still lol

Uh... Fire's definitely more simple, and I'd even argue Arcane isn't complex once you know the right time to cast stuff. Frost is more easy to learn, hard to master, while Arcane is the pure opposite, and Fire is just stupidly easy to learn and not hard at all to master

I find fire a lot more complex with how living bomb works compared to frost bomb, and how to time combustion - Gets even worse when throwing PC into the mix.

i find frost easier to master too, even using frost bomb... the whole rotation boils down to procs>frost bolt for the most part. I've spent at least an hour each on arcane/fire and find both of them much harder to learn. arcane especially with the damn mana management (i remember it in previous xpacs being easier, maybe i'm just worse now haha)

[Waldoe]

I can't find anyone who can beat an arcane spec that knows what they are doing.

[Deleted]

Arcane - insne single target, low AoE, low cleave
Fire - low single target, insane AoE, good cleave
Frost - good single target, good QoE, good cleave

so frost is best all-around spec but for BRF best choice should be switching between arcane and fire (with mastery gems/enchants - decent rating for fire AoE/cleave)

[Deleted]

Fire's rotation is a lot more complex than people give it credit for. Its inbetween CD phase isn't much, but maximizing your Combustion takes a lot of work to get the hang of.

Fire's just in a funky place right now though, it's viable in Mythic Highmaul but you to invest in quite a few niche pieces of gear that you can't aqcuire from the raid itself, with a fully upgraded DMF trinket being pretty much mandatory.

[Deleted]

Fire as other people have pointed out does indeed scale well with gear. But keep in mind that it is also the first spec to get nerfed when it starts to go too well. But even after the nerfs it usually is above the others. Provided that you have the gear.