1. #1

    Question Fire or Arcane at higher ilvl?

    Hi All

    First of all, any advice given is much appreciated.

    I am now ilvl665 and on Frost I do about 24K only. While I know taking up duties (like swap stacks on Butcher) made me DPS suffered a bit, I don't want to make it an excuse for the poor DPS. I am trying to correct small mistake I made here and there, but I doubt I can improve by another 4-5K DPS. I mean some of you maybe can do better with my gears but I know my limit... :P We are now doing Heroic HM and I doubt my guild can proceed to clear Mythic HM.

    Anyway, back to the question. I read at certain ilvl, Fire/Arcane tends to perform better. Of course it highly depends on the person executing it, but I wonder how do we decide when is the ilvl? I know the talk about 'playing whatever spec you like most', I have raided with all 3 specs in the past so I have no issue with switching to Fire/Arcane.

    1. Would like to hear your view on whether Fire or Arcane is "more worth the learning " moving forwards. I would like to keep my Frost spec.
    2. At which ilvl I should focus on learning those?
    3. What DPS I should be achieving at my gear ilvl? I tried to SIM but I am not sure how realistic the number is compared to actual raid environment.

    Armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...oufix/advanced
    Logs: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...9aG3zr#fight=8

    Thank you!

  2. #2
    Deleted
    Both fire and arcane will put up better single target numbers come BRF BiS gear, but if you're not gonna clear mythic BRF then it's unlikely fire will overtake frost for single target.
    That said, fire has far superior AoE and arcane is far superior on single target in Blackrock Foundry (part due to the itemization there), so 90% of players on this forum will tell you to drop frost and learn both.
    Honestly the differences aren't relevant enough for you to play something you don't enjoy, so my recommendation is to pick whatever spec you like (except fire being mandatory on fights like Tectus, because let's be reasonable here, Living Bomb OP )

    As for your DPS, you can definitely improve in that department, but you're aware of that which is good. Personally, I'm at 669 ilvl and regularly do ~30k on Butcher and Kargath, sometimes more sometimes less. This is close to my simulated values minus ~4%, which accounts for the many mistakes I usually make in a raid environment, so I tend to trust Simcraft completely on stand-still fights. The people behind the mage APL are remarkably knowledgeable about the class and they've done a fantastic job on simcraft as a tool.

    I simmed your armory and you should definitely be doing ~28k at least (with a sim value of ~30.5k), and I can see from your logs that you're munching a lot of procs. In the Butcher fight, you synced MI and IV which wasn't necessary since you could've gotten a whole extra use out of it (syncing is necessary on Mythic where the enrage is 4 minutes).



    TL;DR: Fire won't overtake Frost for single target anytime soon. Even when it does, it won't be by a lot. Arcane already is better for you on ST, but limits your mobility. Both will be better for progression in BRF than Frost (if the common wisdom in the mage community is correct).
    Hope this helps

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by Theistic View Post
    Honestly the differences aren't relevant enough for you to play something you don't enjoy, so my recommendation is to pick whatever spec you like (except fire being mandatory on fights like Tectus, because let's be reasonable here, Living Bomb OP )

    As for your DPS, you can definitely improve in that department, but you're aware of that which is good. Personally, I'm at 669 ilvl and regularly do ~30k on Butcher and Kargath, sometimes more sometimes less. This is close to my simulated values minus ~4%, which accounts for the many mistakes I usually make in a raid environment, so I tend to trust Simcraft completely on stand-still fights. The people behind the mage APL are remarkably knowledgeable about the class and they've done a fantastic job on simcraft as a tool.

    I simmed your armory and you should definitely be doing ~28k at least (with a sim value of ~30.5k), and I can see from your logs that you're munching a lot of procs. In the Butcher fight, you synced MI and IV which wasn't necessary since you could've gotten a whole extra use out of it (syncing is necessary on Mythic where the enrage is 4 minutes).

    TL;DR: Fire won't overtake Frost for single target anytime soon. Even when it does, it won't be by a lot. Arcane already is better for you on ST, but limits your mobility. Both will be better for progression in BRF than Frost (if the common wisdom in the mage community is correct).
    Hope this helps
    Thank you for your advise! I'll drop Arcane and pick up Fire then. Of all three, Arcane is my least favourite. I specced to it to try and I pull better numbers with it now than Fire. Still need to figure out the whole Ignite thingy, that's for another day another topic.

    On my DPS, can you talk a bit more about my munching? I believe I did munch at the start of fight as I was busy setting up FO, PC, TW etc and sometimes I got it messed up. However, I don't think I did much banking on procs though. Also, 28K is about 4K DPS above what I am doing. I believe I pulled 26K once on a fight but that's like once. I am not sure what other things I need to watch out to get to 28K. Currently, I try to do the below. It seems largely correct according to the forum here and if indeed so, it means my munching munched away 4K dps...

    0:00 Pre-Pot, Pre-MI, Pre-FB with WJ, FO, PC, IV, TW then spam FoF, BF
    1:30 FO, PC
    2:00 MI
    3:00 FO, PC, IV
    4:00 MI
    4:30 FO, PC
    6:00 MI, FO, PC, IV, 2nd Pot
    p/s: when TV, FO on cd.

    I'll keep Frost for now as it is the most familiar spec for me now and I can do better dps with FoF proc etc during progression. Using Arcane for progression is pain in the a$$ for me.

  4. #4
    Deleted
    Either go arcane + fire (on BRF 5/10 bosses are cleave fights) prioritizing mastery or keep it as frost. It doesn't matter ilvl as long as you have mastery gear. I have a mage 685ilvl and also another mage with 650ilvl. Though it's harder to play as arcane than frost and the dps improvement is not so high as previous expansion/patches so if you are more confident playing as frost, for progression I'd suggest keep frost spec.

    The mayor problem is that frost gear is quite bad for both arcane and frost, meanwhile arcane gear is almost perfect for fire (in cleave fights mastery > crit as fire).

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by seijulala View Post
    Either go arcane + fire (on BRF 5/10 bosses are cleave fights) prioritizing mastery or keep it as frost. It doesn't matter ilvl as long as you have mastery gear. I have a mage 685ilvl and also another mage with 650ilvl. Though it's harder to play as arcane than frost and the dps improvement is not so high as previous expansion/patches so if you are more confident playing as frost, for progression I'd suggest keep frost spec.

    The mayor problem is that frost gear is quite bad for both arcane and frost, meanwhile arcane gear is almost perfect for fire (in cleave fights mastery > crit as fire).
    Hmm do you think Frost/Fire is viable? My gear now does post problem though. I am high on multistrike and mastery but my crit is low, nowhere near 50%...

  6. #6
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by vitaminc1231 View Post
    On my DPS, can you talk a bit more about my munching? I believe I did munch at the start of fight as I was busy setting up FO, PC, TW etc and sometimes I got it messed up. However, I don't think I did much banking on procs though. Also, 28K is about 4K DPS above what I am doing. I believe I pulled 26K once on a fight but that's like once. I am not sure what other things I need to watch out to get to 28K. Currently, I try to do the below. It seems largely correct according to the forum here and if indeed so, it means my munching munched away 4K dps...

    0:00 Pre-Pot, Pre-MI, Pre-FB with WJ, FO, PC, IV, TW then spam FoF, BF
    1:30 FO, PC
    2:00 MI
    3:00 FO, PC, IV
    4:00 MI
    4:30 FO, PC
    6:00 MI, FO, PC, IV, 2nd Pot
    p/s: when TV, FO on cd.

    I'll keep Frost for now as it is the most familiar spec for me now and I can do better dps with FoF proc etc during progression. Using Arcane for progression is pain in the a$$ for me.
    Frost is perfectly viable, and will be (hopefully) one of the most solid and versatile ranged DPS specs going into BRF.

    That said, you had 32 casts of Ice Lance but 42 procs of FoF, which tells me you missed 10 Ice Lance casts, essentially increasing your Ice Lance usage by 30% (which would raise your DPS by ~1.2k (it would probably be more, since you're probably missing a lot of FoF on pull that would go to your PC and cleave for 50% on top of that)

    Pre-FB with WJ is a DPS loss at mythic gear levels, as your FO will on average generate plenty procs and you want to maximize time spent utilizing your Int Pot and other buffs at the beginning of a fight on just dumping everything into your crystal, then getting rid of any leftover procs (if there are any). WJ post-Crystal is better on average, but this isn't a huge issue, at most a couple hundred DPS, but it could be why you're munching. I see a 100% uptime on FoF for the first 22 seconds of the fight, with a large majority of it spent on 2 stacks of FoF. Another issue is the only 6 casts of Ice Nova. In a 300 second fight, at least 11 casts should've been used. Almost doubling the damage from Ice Nova would give ~1.5k more DPS.

    Looking at your PC usage, not a single Brain Freeze proc was used on any of the three crystals. This might just be bad luck, though, but a thing to note is that FFB is a higher DPET spell than even Ice Nova (by a lot, actually), so it's always a good idea to dump them into the PC whenever possible (as long as you don't have 2 FoF procs of course, as you risk munching procs by casting FFB with 2 FoF).

    I'd advise asking some of the better mages on this forum or heading over to Altered-Time as the majority here and there are far more skilled and experienced than I and coiuld be of much greater help both in analyzing your play and in recommending alternatives :P
    I've practically no knowledge of how to work warcraftlogs, so I might've made some mistakes in my assumptions or observations, in which case I hope someone corrects me. In any case, I hope I've helped a little.

  7. #7
    Thank you guys. On my DPS, I have tried on dummy a few rounds and only able to do 24K. I made a video of it too. Granted I am missing a few buffs from raid, nonetheless I would like you to comment if you have the time...

    Logs: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...-done&source=1


  8. #8
    Deleted
    Looking at the burst phase (which makes or breaks your DPS as frost) you lose out on a LOT of FoF procs, you start the fight burst with 2 FoF procs, then send out your frozen orb, meaning you miss out on the guaranteed one. then with 2 FoF and frozen orb ticking you pop your INs before ice lancing.
    If you ever have two stacks of either Brain Freeze or FoF always use them, you don't want to waste procs, IN is fine to use at the end of the crystal as well, as long as you get both out before it disappears

  9. #9
    You really want to be both, they share itemization well enough that their synergy works well on a fight by fight basis (ST or AoE friendly), while Frost does not. Also, fear not, Fire and Arcane are no harder than Frost to play.

    edit: that being said, your lvl of play and question indicates you as a pretty casual player, which means ultimately you will do just fine in Frost as well, play what you enjoy the most.
    Last edited by Kshar; 2015-02-02 at 08:25 PM.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Kshar View Post
    You really want to be both, they share itemization well enough that their synergy works well on a fight by fight basis (ST or AoE friendly), while Frost does not. Also, fear not, Fire and Arcane are no harder than Frost to play.

    edit: that being said, your lvl of play and question indicates you as a pretty casual player, which means ultimately you will do just fine in Frost as well, play what you enjoy the most.
    Ok. I have respecced into Fire for a start. I tried a few round of it and couldn't get hold of ideal Ignite for combustion yet.

    As for Frost, I'll try to cut down my munching at opening to see if I improve by a bit. I may give up Frost for Arcane, depending on how comfortable I am with Fire delivering good numbers 1st. I tried a bit of Arcane before respec and still couldn't get used to it...

  11. #11
    Get combustion helper. Fire feels pretty awarding when you learn it.

    Go do dummys alot and run some lfr or dungeons to learn

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