"TL;DR Best spec" for each fight during entry-gear progression in mythic

[Deleted]

From what I gather, from logs and what is posted on forums. Correct it with your objections. I will edit if it's convincing.

Hellfire Assault: Arcane because the strategy is mainly a sequence of nukes, Others: Fire might look best if the strategy isn't followed normally and it's only there to indiscriminately AOE. Similarly Frost isn't bad but it's a mix of the two other specs, nuking and cleaving randomly in there.
Iron Reaver: Arcane because it's a simple single-target case with more usually-single target ads so no easy contest there. Others: Frost isn't bad but not optimal though maybe easier to play in there, fire is crap on single target.
Kormrok: Arcane because it's mainly one target and hands are usually better spammed with it than frost. Harder to play but hard to beat if done properly.
Hellfire High Council: Frost because 2-3 target cleaving is widespread for at least half of the fight. Others: the last part of the fight might make Arcane sound better in there but there is a lot of cleaving that is optimal for frost until that last part and the distant mirror ads aren't that suitable for any of the two specs anyway.
Killrogg Deadeye: Arcane because visions. Frost might be good if it stays out but meh.
Gorefiend: Arcane because it's a spam of single target cases.
Iskar: Arcane because similarly with the 1st boss it has priority targets.
Soc: Arcane because it has priority targets unless ghosts must be done, frost in that case.
Zakuun: Arcane because it's purely single target, even if harder to pull.
Xhul: Arcane mainly because of the AOE interrrupt but it ends up with decent AOE parses anyway
Tyrant: Frost because of the perfect cleave situation, similar to the first phase of Council
Mannoroth: Frost because it's a mess and the spec can handle unpredictability well.
Archimonde: Frost if there is unpredictability. Arcane can be more optimal on very predictably good teams.

[Deleted]

Xhul: it realy depends on your raid setup. If you need more dmg to Imps, fire is actualy realy good for that, but arcane is realy great for killing Voidfiends and burst in last phase. e.g. we have 3 MM hunters (they don't want to go BM here ) so they take care of Voidfiends, but we don't have that much AoE so 2 mages go fire and 1 arcane for more interupts and additional Voidfiend dmg. So arcane is not your only choice on Xhul.

[Zelendria]

Council has nowhere near the cleave you think it does, and it's never more than 2 targets.
You'll cleave for the first 2mins or so on your first kill while Jube and Bloodboil are stacked and alive. After that your only chance of cleave is a token mirror image on top of Dia otherwise it's single target.
Every image is far enough apart to stop cleaving.

[Deleted]

Council has nowhere near the cleave you think it does, and it's never more than 2 targets.
You'll cleave for the first 2mins or so on your first kill while Jube and Bloodboil are stacked and alive. After that your only chance of cleave is a token mirror image on top of Dia otherwise it's single target.
Every image is far enough apart to stop cleaving.

Thing is though that mirrors will be always near dia for a while and most of the health is on the first 2 bosses so meters will not be fair to Arcane so the question is will you exchange a real advantage on the 1st phase and partially on mirror phase for an advantage on the final part and being unfairly treated on meters?


This assumes there is another dedicated team for most Jube mirrors, both those specs are not that great for them compared to other classes anyway.

[Zelendria]

They're really not. Dia is tanked in one place until it's time to focus her down when images are gone. You get hardly any cleave past Bloodboil dying.
Also the hardest part of that fight is killing Dia before she kills you when Arcane > Frost.
Meters doesn't = best spec.

It's funny I even suggest this being as I still play Frost on it week in week out. I suppose I'm just comfortable playing Frost on it and CBA going Arcane

[Deleted]

They're really not. Dia is tanked in one place until it's time to focus her down when images are gone. You get hardly any cleave past Bloodboil dying.
Also the hardest part of that fight is killing Dia before she kills you when Arcane > Frost.
Meters doesn't = best spec.

It's funny I even suggest this being as I still play Frost on it week in week out. I suppose I'm just comfortable playing Frost on it and CBA going Arcane

Hardest part is subjective. Some may find the transition windows harder.