[LEGION] What is your GUT telling you? FIRE/ARCANE/FROST? [DPS][PvE][Raiding]

[Profal]

The fact they nerf single target burst but they give more mana, further strengthens the notion that this expansion tries to make all specs as flat as possible in capability. Arcane was way too good at burst DPS and it appears they try to moderate that (especially since the highest sustained damage talent on row 100 will likely be the slow-building Quickening). Similarly fire appears to be getting very reliable single target DPS and I'm pretty sure they intend for its AOE to be much lower.

Absolutely.

[Deleted]

Absolutely.

Frost might become the best spec for a long time if that kind of design culminates. Why get another spec if they all do the same results? Frost will likely remain the most convenient, easy and reliable.

[Deleted]

Thank god they removed the godawful combustion shit that plagued Fire since Cataclysm. It was absolutely unfun to be at complete mercy of rng, and be completely scammed of dps if you botched it. Detaching spreading from Inferno Blast is amazing too, since these were 2 completely different functions (spreading and forcing hot streak) that made for a completely awkward situations. Whoever Fire spec will lose from overreacting players, it will definitely gain in people trying it and not be deterred by unintuitive mess of mechanics.

Also, was a lost Frostfire Bolt really equal to 90% of your frost enjoyment? If so, I doubt you were a frost enthusiast in the first place.

Hah! I disagree everything you just said here. Feeling exactly opposite how mage should be. Finding the legion fire especially boring as it is and frost atleast for now feels weak and frankly not fun at all.

[whisperingsage]

Frost might become the best spec for a long time if that kind of design culminates. Why get another spec if they all do the same results? Frost will likely remain the most convenient, easy and reliable.

If they replace the FoF procs on Blizzard with Brain Freeze you might be right.

[pixelated senpai]

Probably fire, most of the fights seem to have some sort of add and cleave besides 1 or 2 patchworks, so fire will probably do decent. I kind of like frost when i tested it (besides the Brain freeze), as far as 100 talents go i would say glacial spike is probably the most interesting one to play with out of all 3 specs. If Brain freeze wasnt a frozen orb thing i might consider it being my 2nd spec of choice over arcane.

[Obelisk Kai]

Am I reading things wrong or is there a lot of negativity regarding Arcane? I really want Arcane to be good this time as I am heavily leaning towards playing it as my main spec from the get go.

[Chromell]

Fire has always been my passion since I can remember. I'm going to give it a shot as my main spec in Legion (shooting phoenixes feels superb), if I don't turn out happy I'll be thrilled to try either Arcane or Frost as they both seem awesome with their artifact perks (Ebon Bolt seems like Frost's version of a Chaos Bolt, how cool is that?!).

[Champagne Supernova]

I will most likely hang up my Mages boots. Combination of super boring talents and likewise for Fire's artifact weapon. I will try out Arcane once the pre-patch hits but I'll doubt i will like it when i already dislike it currently. Excited to try an Enhancement shaman though, Some pretty nice talents, fast playstyle and hopefully decent damage this time around.

[Radaney]

Well Fire is the most fun and if you don't play something you find fun in Legion you're going to have a bad time because getting another spec up to scruff with your main spec is...painful.

[Deleted]

My guess would be arcane, not because of the DPS but because they will have more/better survival tools in raid. Starting with Greater Invis., such powerful utility Fire and Frost are denied.

I am playing frost for a long time now and will probably stay the same - unless the utility of arcane is really that overwhelming, and the importance of water elemental is toned down. Then I surely will go arcane, and get the frost artifact later. Pity that the BE artifact is for fire, but I could get it later, anyway, if you can have all of them.

[Deleted]

1. Arcane: 1,000,000 DPS - Based on previous tiers of raiding content, Arcane has always been the true glass canon spec with severe moility and AoE issues. I believe they will compensate this spec with big D DPS to make up for their shortcomings.

You want people to make useless predictions based on their feelings? In a game that is inevitably resolved by math and nothing else? Seriously, who cares about feelings if they are irrelevant? Like, I loved fire but I've played arcane on live because gear from Hellfire Citadel and the way fights and cooldowns interact makes arcane the only spec worth playing.

Also, can you learn how to type words properly. If you want to have a discussion about anything, I thought the point was not to sound like a badly educated child. For example, "canon" and "cannon" are two completely different words. On top of the mistakes that this site's text editor would point out to you if you bothered to look at the tiny red lines under words ---

[twistedmynd]

So speaking of gut:
I really liked old fire. Combustion was broken. So was hot streak+heating up camping. But I'm up to 17 level 100s. I play every class and every spec and have kept up with them through the years. Fire's rotation was totally unique and I liked the difference in rotation, regardless of the lower dps. So my gut doesn't care about fire's numbers. It was just really fun to play. But mage was also never my main.

=====

I'm rolling mage for legion. I've mained priest for years, druid for some time, and last xpac I wanted to shake things up and go rogue. I've found that at my age and at this point in time, doing dps instead of a more critical role is a better choice for complimenting my lifestyle. So pure dps classes for me, and I think I'll just change mains with each new xpac for variety.

I'm going to play arcane because arcane is a thinking man's spec. It doesn't offer the flashiness or the s00per numbers on those aoe packs. But with the new change to mastery, you can literally plan how to do the best and most critical dps for every fight.

You can build around doing burst and even decide more flexibly when to burst (talents, charge systems, ect). You can actually do some aoe now and decide how to do that aoe (which I don't really care about).

You have insane movement now that shimmer+displacement has been added and icy floes is still here. You can immune critical abilities with ice block. You can suck up insane damage with greater invis. Slow applies to a group. I can literally do everything that was previously "hunter duty" now and rockstar my dps according to the fight needs.

So yeah, arcane in the hands of a capable player is going to be the biggest force to be reckoned with.

New fire is actually fun, but I just loved old fire too much. I leveled a little bit and I liked the new way to burn down trash packs, but the old way was so unique imo. It will never be the same.

Frost always caught my eye with solo'ing and pvp. No idea why anyone enjoys frost in pve, but maybe they don't have access to the other classes who do the same but better. But I'm not going to be frosting much because you're going to want to level as the spec you're maining in raids to get started on that artifact.

I'm pvping as a healer in 3s and/or if I'm dpsing then our team strat is doing rot/cleave comps. So I'm doing a pvp alt instead of using my mage. The new pvp meta game in 3s isn't a friendly place for control comps (and rated bg's are trash).

[Butosai]

I mean, isnt everyone goign to play all 3 specs? last I knew you could get all 3 artifact weapons

[whisperingsage]

You can get all three... eventually. Meanwhile, one artifact is basically focused on entirely, a second gets scraps, and the third probably won't get any artifact power at all till the first one is finished, unless sims show otherwise.

[Deleted]

I don't think you will ever finish just 1 if you want to have all three. The cost becomes insane towards the end while your other specs may need nothing compared to it. Well, an exception might be if we're talking about the very end of the expansion, the nerfs there might be excessive.

[ttylol]

i would say glacial spike is probably the most interesting one to play with out of all 3 specs

Agreed. Especially if their artifact's chance for double icicles is frequent? Finding a good time for 10 seconds of Ray + Rune sounds interesting too.

The new raid talent swap item costs about 20 rare herbs and 150 common herbs. For comparison, the new cauldron lasts an hour and costs ~150 common herbs. So, because of the cost, my gut says most players will talent each spec for what it's best at and then swap between specs instead of talents. (And the last 94% of artifact power grind is only +10% damage, so alt specs will be comparable sooner rather than later.)