Frost VS Arcane

[herpookybear]

with the gear I have currently on, not taking the enchants or gems into consideration since I can change that, would it be more viable to be playing frost or arcane at the moment? doing normal HFC and soon going into heroic. any help would be great.

here is a link to my armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...9nomxpr/simple

[Biomega]

Why not both? HFC lends itself well to playing both specs, particularly with the tier bonuses. You can gear for haste followed by multistrike and do well in either spec, switching depending on boss.

Since you're not doing Mythic, there is no reason you should be min/maxing to the extreme at every gear level. Both Frost and Arcane are very viable, and often it's the fight mechanics or your guild's strategy that determines what works particularly well for you.

That being said, you can also just stay Arcane. Out of all the mage specs, Arcane seems to be the most consistently good spec atm. Once you get Prophecy, you can even do well in AoE/cleave fights. Do keep in mind though that even for pure Arcane you will quickly want to gear for haste, and not the pure mastery setup you might remember from the HM/BRF days. Exact stat weights are, of course, available by simming your character.

EDIT: Make sure you check the most recent guides on mages. I notice you're not running with the Splitting Ice glyph for your Frost setup, which imo is basically THE reason to be playing Frost in the first place...

[JIMM-]

frost is preferred on certain fights like council, xhul, velhari, archimonde and maybe mannoroth.

arcane is slightly better in the remaining fights. with that being said, both specs can perform equally well depending on how comfortable u are with them.


just main arc / frost offspec, that is the best way to go in HFC.

[Polarthief]

just main arc / frost offspec, that is the best way to go in HFC.

The problem is both use completely different stats. Arcane wants M > H (and at some point H > M) while Frost wants Multistrike and has Mastery below even Versatility. So unless you have multiple pieces for your other slots, you're not going to get much from your less geared spec.

That said, you can play either Frost or Arcane and do well all around.

[Deleted]

On some fights frost is better than arcane even with arcane gear so it realy doesn't matter if you don't have heavy multistrike gear that much.
Best way is to gear mainly for arcane (haste > mastery if you have 4p) and get some multistrike gear if it is availible. But if you want play only one spec than you can choose what you want (arcane/frost - fire is out ofc ) - difference is not that huge and this min-maxing is needed mostly for myhtic.

[Biomega]

Actually, from what I've seen so far, Arcane does in fact reach a point where they also gear for Haste -> Multistrike and not Haste -> Mastery, making it fairly easy to have good stats for Frost. Even before that, Multistrike is a decent stat for Arcane.

[LocNess]

The problem is both use completely different stats. Arcane wants M > H (and at some point H > M) while Frost wants Multistrike and has Mastery below even Versatility. So unless you have multiple pieces for your other slots, you're not going to get much from your less geared spec.

That said, you can play either Frost or Arcane and do well all around.

Not entirely true, as my simmed weights for Frost and Arcane are currently:

Frost - Multi > Mastery > Haste

Arcane - Mastery > Haste >= Multi

With Crit/Vers being below everything obviously. They are essentially interchangeable, and that applies to everybody during the gearing up process which is why it is important to know how to simcraft and not take guides as 100% fact *cough900haste4Pfirecough*. I was wearing incorrect gear at times until I double-checked last week.

Frost bounces around a lot, really.

[Envyadams]

I have been playing frost alot in HFC and find it does pretty good on all fights even the ST fights where Arcane might be preferred.

Personally pick a spec to play and go for it. From what i have seen frost will be competitive throughout this raid so /shrug

Personally I dislike arcane and i'm pretty sad I can't play fire for the last raid tier of this expansion /cry

[Smartblonde]

I think at this point its fair to say that arcane is here to stay and frost is the new fire. The only sad part about it is of course the different stats per spec, but who can really complain....the combat/sub rogues have it wayyyyy worse than us!

[Deleted]

Play arcane if you wish to live irl, frost is so boring you'll die before you have time to respec.

[pkm]

Play arcane if you wish to live irl, frost is so boring you'll die before you have time to respec.

Riiiight

Try playing frost with the 4pc, it gets pretty hectic and even more so with class trinket.

[rosco]

Also consider how comfortable you are with a spec. The single target sims put them in the same area of damage. Arcane has a higher upper limit, but if you're not comfortable with playing arcane, the low limit is lower than frost's low end sim. Your raid needs you to play in a way that is comfortable for you so you can focus on mechanics instead of overthinking rotation.

[Lothar]

so, looked through tons of threads, went to altered time, still no luck:

how to enchant as arcane/frost? multistrike on everything or haste? (in bis ofc or atleast w 4pc).

[jccallah]

so, looked through tons of threads, went to altered time, still no luck:

how to enchant as arcane/frost? multistrike on everything or haste? (in bis ofc or atleast w 4pc).

What I got from a few of the altered-time threads is to go all out haste (at least until 1300). Haste isn't bad for frost and it is necessary to reach that break point at the very least for arcane. It is good to keep going haste even further than 1300 for arcane. What I am personally doing is going all out haste on my arcane set and picking up alternative pieces here and there for slap multi on for frost. I hope this helped some.

[Lothar]

What I got from a few of the altered-time threads is to go all out haste (at least until 1300). Haste isn't bad for frost and it is necessary to reach that break point at the very least for arcane. It is good to keep going haste even further than 1300 for arcane. What I am personally doing is going all out haste on my arcane set and picking up alternative pieces here and there for slap multi on for frost. I hope this helped some.

yes it did, thanks, was already heavily leaning towards that approach

[Invrlose]

Not entirely true, as my simmed weights for Frost and Arcane are currently:

Frost - Multi > Mastery > Haste

Arcane - Mastery > Haste >= Multi

With Crit/Vers being below everything obviously. They are essentially interchangeable, and that applies to everybody during the gearing up process which is why it is important to know how to simcraft and not take guides as 100% fact *cough900haste4Pfirecough*. I was wearing incorrect gear at times until I double-checked last week.

Frost bounces around a lot, really.

And the fights where we're using frost are mostly cleave fights, where mastery gets a larger benefit

[Zulandia]

And the fights where we're using frost are mostly cleave fights, where mastery gets a larger benefit

Unless something has changes since the last time I played frost the value of mastery (relative to haste/multi/crit) should go down with more targets not up.

[Vycaus]

Arcane shines, as usual, on anything with high ST and with a Prophecy of Fear can tribute very well to cleave fights if you can manage the debuff. I got the class trinket last week and have 2p currently, decided to give frost a real shot and did it for 12/13H. I actually love shatterlance. It's so much fun weave them between FBs and find time for FFBs. So many procs, because MS at 708ilvl is around 40%, that it becomes a game of planning casts/movement several seconds in advance. Kind of creates a combo situation. It is definitely less mobile than the frost of the past with free movement with procs, but proper use of icy floes makes this irrelevant. On anything with more than 1 target, the class trinket makes frost > arc. On pure ST, I saw little difference between my arc dps and frosts. I might simply be more comfortable/better at frost than arc, but I've found that simply going full time frost to be my best option. Iron Reaver and Fel Lord are the only real ST fights in the tier. That's right, 2 ST fights. Arc may be better there, but i'd argue Frost is better on the other 11, esp Arch. I'm sitting around 65-75k sustained DPS with 2 targets, which is basically all the time this tier.

Plus this makes gearing easy. I wont get to use an Arch piece in my OS, but the OS helm off Xhul is so perfectly stated and only 5 ilvls under arch. This is just my opinion. If you wanted to main arc and frost, you could. stay around the 1300 haste mark and you'll be fine. The people posting mastery as arc's best start are clueless/outdated. The 2p/4p arcane scale with haste and not at all with mastery. with 4p arc you want 1300 haste>MS>haste>mastery. For frost you want MS>=Crit/Haste. They are really very close that you can almost play frost/arc like you played arc/fire in BRF (rip fire, you'll be missed). Personally i'd pick one you enjoy and gear for that. Unlike BRF, we wont be god tier on every fight simply because bookings are still the best all class, but arcane has a lot of places it shines, and frost will IMO be the most played spec this tier if people can stomach shatterlance (which is actually fun).

TL/DR Frost and Arc are both completely viable solo geared and mix geared. Frost is very competitive again with arch trinket. Pre class trinket i'd Arc.

[Lady Velvet]

Personally I dislike arcane and i'm pretty sad I can't play fire for the last raid tier of this expansion /cry

Fire on Assault and Xhul is pretty good. I know it is only those 2 fights that makes fire viable in the raid and most people wouldn't pick a spec for only 2 fights, but I enjoy fire in these 2 fights. Specially Xhul. All the mages that I play with go Frost on Xhul and I end up above them with a huge margin in dps in this fight.

[Zelendria]

I imagine to do that you're on full time boss duty and leaving the Void stepper things to someone else. Fire DPS plummets if you switch to non cleave targets.
Also at the point of using Time Warp when the dmg to the boss really matters Fire will get left behind by both Frost and Arcane.
You will win the meter though.