Simcrafting Mastery>Haste

[Deleted]

It's easy though to assess a single target, it's not easy to assess the cleave's contribution since it's something that helps indirectly for later.

[DevilsAdvocate]

Arcane is such a pain to play because of the huge variance in parses. When I was gearing (my mage is my main alt), I had bad rng on my first few pulls and the dumbass raid lead would never give me loot. If you don't proc doom nova, your dps is trash. If you proc doom nova at just the right time on pull (3rd or 4th arcane blast), it's amazing as you can use all your procs, lay down crystal and easily be doulbe the 2nd place guy on meters. If you proc doom nova one after another on pull, you can get on warcraftlogs rankings. But these situations are few and far between.

Frost tends to be better because it has a much higher floor, is easier to play in high movement fights, and has competitive DPS even on single target with the class trinket. Simcraft dps rankings had Arcane way ahead when 6.2 was released but now Frost is slightly ahead.

As for haste, it seems like such a boom or bust state because it affects your pets and if they don't proc, mastery is slightly to signficiantly better. I know on average haste is suppose to be better, but mastery feels safer especially since its such a superior stat at low gear levels and doesn't depend on pet procs to really pull ahead.

[Deleted]

It's easy though to assess a single target, it's not easy to assess the cleave's contribution since it's something that helps indirectly for later.

Its easy.

You either kill your target or dont. If you dont, you either have to low dps or your dps is on the wrong target aka to much cleave or aoe.

[Deleted]

That's irrelevant when the target is not necessary to be killed asap.