Fight & spec breakdown

[mauserr]

Hey there.

So I'm coming back to WoW after a break again, and surprise surprise, rerolling again. Could you good fellows please give me an overview of HFC on a fight & spec basis? Where to play Arcane, and where to go with Frost?

Haven't been following the changes a lot, but I guess Fire is no longer a thing, or is it?

[Naedrim]

Frost: Council, Tyrant, Manno, Arch
Arcane: Everything else
Fire: Potential on Iskar and Xhul but not really needed, and you lose priority target damage.

There are some fights where you can play either, but generally you'd just go arcane for the priority target damage and ability to easily target swap, which frost can have trouble with due to 14s duration on waterjet with the 4p.

[Sylvaeres]

Unless you're pushing mythic, you can play frost for the entire raid. I do it every week and I do pretty well. You could probably do Arcane for most fights as well. It's honestly up to your personal preference. As far as fire, you could pad meters and make yourself look good to the untrained eye on a few fights (Assault, Xhul, and Iskar) but you wouldn't actually do alot of damage to priority targets

[Deleted]

Keep in mind they have almost fucked up and arcane is extremely complex at the moment compared to frost, especially after the Archimonde and Mannoroth trinkets since frost becomes a dull 2-spell spec in almost every single fight and arcane has to do acrobatics with various random procs and spells. Some fights favor arcane mainly for utility reasons, however, when it's almost the same and when logs mainly show padding crap-shoots being higher it might be better to start with frost. That's only about Mythic by the way because heroic is too easy and frost can go through all.


A lot of all that depends on strategy and the raid setup. Keep thinking about it. Ideally no player or guild just copies forums or Method.

[mauserr]

Arcane complex? I've been watching streams of some people (high level people) and it doesn't look nowhere near complex.

[Deleted]

Arcane complex? I've been watching streams of some people (high level people) and it doesn't look nowhere near complex.

Read the whole sentence of what you're talking about. It's extremely complex compared to frost on end-game. Frost is practically 2 spells in almost all fights at the moment while Arcane has to take care of several spells and procs while it has to switch targets on the fly during the critical moment of its burn when all hell breaks loose with 999% haste.


Let alone it can't even move without breaking rotation or managing yet more spells.

[Dizzeeyooo]

Arcane complex? I've been watching streams of some people (high level people) and it doesn't look nowhere near complex.

it doesn't look complex because its not complex

as Azkial said, if you are just starting out you can pretty much play either frost or arcane for every single boss - if you are new to mage then choosing frost first and then going arcane later if you can be bothered to play two specs would probably be your best bet

[Deleted]

I guess people find it hard to admit the obvious in case they are not considered God. Frost on end-game gear at the moment is practically a 2 spell faceroll that needs less effort that a rogue in a 5man on level 15, and I'm not even exaggerating much. Arcane on end-game is a convoluted mess of 5-6 different procs, switches of targets on the fly and restricted movement that can not break a burn.

[Dizzeeyooo]

I guess people find it hard to admit the obvious in case they are not considered God. Frost on end-game gear at the moment is practically a 2 spell faceroll that needs less effort that a rogue in a 5man on level 15, and I'm not even exaggerating much. Arcane on end-game is a convoluted mess of 5-6 different procs, switches of targets on the fly and restricted movement that can not break a burn.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/ranking.../latest#boss=0

considering frost is such an easy, 2 button faceroll spec, I'm surprised your percentiles as frost look like that, especially considering your ilvl

yes frost is easier to play then arcane, no-one is disputing that, but suggesting frost is brainless and arcane requires a mensa level iq to play is flat out stupid and wrong

[Deleted]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/ranking.../latest#boss=0

considering frost is such an easy, 2 button faceroll spec, I'm surprised your percentiles as frost look like that, especially considering your ilvl

Wow. That's a vile attempt to troll. You went on a witch-hunt with hints found outside this forum and found a character that has 90% of its logs from pugs it raid leaded, typing raid warnings during most fights.

But whatever makes you pretend you are a good player.

[LocNess]

Keep it on topic, no point bickering over pointless stuff.

[Deleted]

We use 2 mages i run frost full time while the other runs Arcane on everything -Arch(hc)

[kirielle]

I play both frost and arcane pretty extensively, I don't see much of a difficulty difference between the two. Target switching with Frost WJ is annoying, recovering from mana mismanagement as arcane is annoying. That's about it.

Frost is optimal for: Assault, Council, Iskar, Tyrant, and Archi; Socrethar if you do ghosts; Xhul and Manno you can do higher dps, but arcane is better for what is generally considered ranged priority adds.

[AvCloudy]

I play both frost and arcane pretty extensively, I don't see much of a difficulty difference between the two. Target switching with Frost WJ is annoying, recovering from mana mismanagement as arcane is annoying. That's about it.

Frost is optimal for: Assault, Council, Iskar, Tyrant, and Archi; Socrethar if you do ghosts; Xhul and Manno you can do higher dps, but arcane is better for what is generally considered ranged priority adds.

I don't think frost is optimal for Assault, Council or Iskar. All these fights have significant phases with no cleave target, and Assault you will waste most of your water jets. Iskar, especially, where the only important part is burning down specific adds, you should be playing Arcane. It's pretty hard to pad on Mannoroth too; you're at the mercy of Infernal spawns. I would say Frost is optimal on Tyrant and Archi, and the rest whatever you can do more single target damage in.

[Deleted]

Most people suggesting Arcane (on everything) do the mistake of assuming perfect gameplay by the player, perfect gameplay by their team and perfect alignment with their own raid strategy. The thing is it's pretty obvious even World 1st guilds are going frost sometimes because it's more consistent in a mess. I doubt they are naive and don't know a robot simulation shows Arcane better.


And I start suspecting this factor enters other areas of the class. e.g. the reason most frost mages in the real world don't touch the crystal.

[vitaminc]

I am not a top mage, I am a very average one; at times below average even. That said, I feel I can play both Arcane and Frost in H HFC comfortably for all fights. Of course by being an average one, I seldom get ranked. We have a few teams in the guild and several Mages. When I go frost, I beat all of them, 99% of the time, even when I am just an average Mage. But when I go Arcane, it is not always the case. Sometimes I lose out by a considerable gap to their Frost. Of course on some fights it favours Frost more, like Arch, Tyrant. However you also see Arcane being ranked top in those fights.

My point is, if you have the skill to do very well on Arcane, then playing Frost is very very easy for you. If you are struggling with Arcane, going Frost will give you better DPS, till you are more familiar with using Ice Floes/target switching/managing proc. In this expansion, someone who can do Arcane very well can faceroll when he plays Frost, not the vice versa. Note, it is on this expansion. With the PoF proc/class trink/4p decision on when to stop AM during AP/when do choose SN over UM/etc. You can run just single set of talents with Frost for all 13 bosses and you still do fine.

So back to OP, it is perfectly fine going full frost on Heroic, even on IR, Fel, Iskar. You may not get ranked, but you won't suffer. We are into Mythic now and my fellow Mages in guild are still going full frost. Reason is they struggle with Arcane.

[Deleted]

Don't hope for ranks because you must be in the top 100 mythic guilds, most of the time. Not for skill, but for gear. It's not challenge mode that it scales everyone down.

[kirielle]

I don't think frost is optimal for Assault, Council or Iskar. All these fights have significant phases with no cleave target, and Assault you will waste most of your water jets. Iskar, especially, where the only important part is burning down specific adds, you should be playing Arcane. It's pretty hard to pad on Mannoroth too; you're at the mercy of Infernal spawns. I would say Frost is optimal on Tyrant and Archi, and the rest whatever you can do more single target damage in.

The difference on single target between arcane and frost is just not that big. As others have said in this thread, you can quite viably go frost for everything, even in mythic. I'm in a 2 day 10/13M guild and our top mage is frost for everything just because he likes the spec.

Frost is optimal for all the fights listed, if you value consistent performance.

On Assault: there is lots of cleave for the vast majority of the fight. Yes WJ sucks, but so do Arcane's MoD procs most of the time.

On Council: the amount of time that you spend getting to cleave two bosses makes up for the small gap between frost and arcane on single target for the rest of the fight.

On Iskar: arcane is better for the ground phase, but frozen orb on add phase means you get lots of ice lances to put into priority target, with the added benefit of cleaving other targets that arcane misses out on.

On Mannoroth: padding refers to imps, not infernals. That being said arcane is a little better at killing infernals, but you will still get far more cleave damage from frost if even half of them are near the boss half the time.

[Deleted]

Keep in mind they have almost fucked up and arcane is extremely complex at the moment compared to frost, especially after the Archimonde and Mannoroth trinkets since frost becomes a dull 2-spell spec in almost every single fight and arcane has to do acrobatics with various random procs and spells.

Wierd, i experienced the opposite; arcane became even easier with 4p+class trinket+PoF while frost got a rotation with 4p+class. The changes in my gameplay: Arcane:1. new opener to avoid PoF proc on the boss (pre PoM; prepot -0,5; PC+AP at start; instant AB; AB/AM depending in PoF proc) 2. before PC+AP i use all my AM procs 3. during AP+PC i cast AB only unless i get a PoF proc on PC/boss, then i AM the one with the debuff 4. we burn our mana deeper -> longer evo. These changes are minuscule and they hardly effect the gameplay of arcane.

Frost: 1. first time the spec has a rotation 2. WJ must target the boss (or a high HP add that will not die within the WJ process) 3. FB/IL weaving requires target switching while WJ is active: FB boss IL (and BF) prio adds. The changes affect gameplay, we need continous target switching which makes the spec more complex and fun, but it is obvious that it is harder to play frost after 4p+class trinket than before - not surprising because the core frost has 0 skillcap.

[Zelendria]

What's the reasoning for PoM in the precast? Using a 90s CD for +1.5s on your Int Pot seems like a massive waste in comparison to the normal precast of AB at 2s resulting in the same outcome.