Beta Raid dps?? Spec's and rank vs. other dps questions

[Multigasm]

I searched but could not find the answers to my questions.

First, is there someone on Beta doing the raid testing that can tell us what kind of dps mages are pulling and how they stack up against the other classes?

Also, has anyone tried raiding in all three specs on beta? How did they work? What was were the pros/cons of our 3 specs?

Thank you

[Anobix]

From what I understand fire has some serious mana problems in beta, people are still trying to find out what Blizzard wants from us (ie weaving a scorch in every/every other fireball/etc). I believe arcane and frost are probably going to be the two strong starters as the crit/haste levels will be so low that fire won't be very competitive unless some changes happen.

[Phovos]

Fire- There are no mana issues at all if you are wearing mage armor (a must on any fight longer than 4 minutes). In 10s I have been doing 14-15k dps as fire.


Frost- Seems pretty well balanced right now. No mana issues running molten armor, and if a fight does take 10 minutes+ switching to mage armor can be a reactive thing. Very little thought or micro managment involved in the mana game for frost. I am doing 13-14k dps as frost.



Arcane, well arcane is my favorite so far in beta. Yes, the "rotation" is easy. But micromanaging mana and cooldowns feels very real, and very engaging. Arcane is by leaps and bounds the highest dps spec for anything below 4 minutes long. Once a fight gets longer than that, however, it becomes a mana game. How long is cd on my evo, when can I evo, how long should I burn at abx4, should I break my stack now or wait for a missiles proc. Feels great to do it well, extremely rewarding.
As arcane I am doing 14-15k dps on a 6 minute fight.

[Anobix]

The problem I have is that molten armor is the fire mage talent, it benefits most of our abilities and allows one of our talents to even work (move while casting scorch). I think that is a pretty bad bandaid to make people use mage armor while fire specced.

[Deleted]

I think Mage Armor is more of a problem as it is too powerful to balance around. The difference between having it and playing without it are just too big.

Imo they need to nerf the mana-regen provided by Mage Armor and then rebalance Mage mana-costs with that in mind.

-Frost with Mage Armor has almost endless mana. The normal rotation just isn't very mana-intensive and neither is Frost-AoE.
-Fire runs oom too fast, even with Mage Armor. Fire's normal rotation is fine, but the AoE is really costly.
-Arcane is all about mana-management so Mage Armor is a no-brainer. Everything is costly, but that is to be expected.

My suggestion would be to nerf Mage Armor by 30% and then reduce Fire's AoE spell-cost by about 30% as well. Frost wouldn't need many changes as it is already very efficient and Arcane would need to have Arcane Blasts cost reduced by about 10%.

[Blitzkrieg Says]

I think Mage Armor is more of a problem as it is too powerful to balance around. The difference between having it and playing without it are just too big.

Imo they need to nerf the mana-regen provided by Mage Armor and then rebalance Mage mana-costs with that in mind.

-Frost with Mage Armor has almost endless mana. The normal rotation just isn't very mana-intensive and neither is Frost-AoE.
-Fire runs oom too fast, even with Mage Armor. Fire's normal rotation is fine, but the AoE is really costly.
-Arcane is all about mana-management so Mage Armor is a no-brainer. Everything is costly, but that is to be expected.

My suggestion would be to nerf Mage Armor by 30% and then reduce Fire's AoE spell-cost by about 30% as well. Frost wouldn't need many changes as it is already very efficient and Arcane would need to have Arcane Blasts cost reduced by about 10%.

I was thinking about the same thing in terms of problems, but I think your solutions are pretty spot on with what needs to be changed.

[Anobix]

I think it would be better if MoE just scaled with arcane blast so instead of being base cost it refunded 30% of the total cost of the spell.

[Evenlyn]

Arcane has lots of problems with mana issue, Mage Armor help with this... if you nerf Mage Armor to help fire spec........

you understand this....

[Deleted]

Arcane has lots of problems issue, Mage Armor help with this... if you nerf Mage Armor to help fire spec........

you understand this....

Wrong quote? He's talking about Master of Elements.

[nerfproof]

Im not having any mana issues as fire in the beta. learning how to switch between molten armor and mage armor is key

[Skarrd]

Arcane has lots of problems issue, Mage Armor help with this... if you nerf Mage Armor to help fire spec........

you understand this....

It would be easy enough to integrate a mage armor buff into the arcane tree if that route were taken.

[flame]

Im not having any mana issues as fire in the beta. learning how to switch between molten armor and mage armor is key

Lol so what are we? Hunters 4.0?

Aspect dancing is bs

[sicness]

Fire- There are no mana issues at all if you are wearing mage armor (a must on any fight longer than 4 minutes). In 10s I have been doing 14-15k dps as fire.


Frost- Seems pretty well balanced right now. No mana issues running molten armor, and if a fight does take 10 minutes+ switching to mage armor can be a reactive thing. Very little thought or micro managment involved in the mana game for frost. I am doing 13-14k dps as frost.



Arcane, well arcane is my favorite so far in beta. Yes, the "rotation" is easy. But micromanaging mana and cooldowns feels very real, and very engaging. Arcane is by leaps and bounds the highest dps spec for anything below 4 minutes long. Once a fight gets longer than that, however, it becomes a mana game. How long is cd on my evo, when can I evo, how long should I burn at abx4, should I break my stack now or wait for a missiles proc. Feels great to do it well, extremely rewarding.
As arcane I am doing 14-15k dps on a 6 minute fight.

Any idea of how much of a dps loss it is to be conservative and go with abx3 instead of 4 and if it's worth it for longer fights?

[Swizzle]

Any idea of how much of a dps loss it is to be conservative and go with abx3 instead of 4 and if it's worth it for longer fights?

Not on beta, but just as a numbers thing, it would be the difference of the percentage lost from not casting the 4th blast and the amount of mana you would regain/maintain.

It's more complicated than that to be sure, but if it will let you do steady and constant DPS throughout the fight when Evocation is on CD, it would be better than blasting away and doing jack nothing in the down time.

[sicness]

Not on beta, but just as a numbers thing, it would be the difference of the percentage lost from not casting the 4th blast and the amount of mana you would regain/maintain.

It's more complicated than that to be sure, but if it will let you do steady and constant DPS throughout the fight when Evocation is on CD, it would be better than blasting away and doing jack nothing in the down time.

Right, I just meant in comparison with the other specs for longer fights would it be equivalent or more/less dps. I realize it's not an easy yes or no question but was hoping to get a general idea if for long fights you're better off going frost or just being conservative with an arcane spec instead, since I'm kinda hoping to avoid frost in pve completely, but that's just me. :/

[Swizzle]

I'll just put my two cents out there based of what I've seen in videos and just general class knowledge based off the talent tree redesign. Fire is a spec that is VERY stat dependent, as it has always been. The change to hot streak is not, in and of itself, enough to offset this, so fire is the WORST spec for the start of the first tier of any raiding, especially in Cataclysm. Arcane is mana dependent, and the mana you have in blues/craftables isn't comparable to what it will be in full epics, so again you have a stat dependent spec albeit on a smaller scale than fire, therefore arcane is the in-between spec when gearing/progressing. Frost, through it's design and focus, is the least stat dependent and the most mana efficient with a workable rotation designed for many scenarios. At this point, it would be a disservice to your raid to be anything other than frost, aka frost will be the spec you START raiding and progressing with.

Once you're fully geared, the choice of which spec to go is entirely up to you. Arcane has the highest skill cap of the three specs with fire and frost being about even, so that may factor into people decisions. Fire, though its core mechanics seems to be ending up as the highest theoretical spec again, so THAT ma factor in your decision, and frost seems to be a fun spec which has a small margin of error and a high amount of survivability. So again, at the end of the tier, you can play what you want, but to start you should be frost.

[Potato Bus]

I had a personal feeling that frost may end up as the go-to spec for the first tier of Cata raiding due to mana issues and low stats. Can't say I'm disappointed. Though in some of the totalbiscuit videos I watched last night, he wasn't having a huge problem with mana as fire. I was cringing though when he would sit at 5k mana with evo and mana gem off CD and keep casting when he had ample opportunity to use the CDs. He never went OOM though from what I saw, but I suppose the low stats could make it a weaker spec than fire to start with in Cata.

[sicness]

I'll just put my two cents out there based of what I've seen in videos and just general class knowledge based off the talent tree redesign. Fire is a spec that is VERY stat dependent, as it has always been. The change to hot streak is not, in and of itself, enough to offset this, so fire is the WORST spec for the start of the first tier of any raiding, especially in Cataclysm. Arcane is mana dependent, and the mana you have in blues/craftables isn't comparable to what it will be in full epics, so again you have a stat dependent spec albeit on a smaller scale than fire, therefore arcane is the in-between spec when gearing/progressing. Frost, through it's design and focus, is the least stat dependent and the most mana efficient with a workable rotation designed for many scenarios. At this point, it would be a disservice to your raid to be anything other than frost, aka frost will be the spec you START raiding and progressing with.

Once you're fully geared, the choice of which spec to go is entirely up to you. Arcane has the highest skill cap of the three specs with fire and frost being about even, so that may factor into people decisions. Fire, though its core mechanics seems to be ending up as the highest theoretical spec again, so THAT ma factor in your decision, and frost seems to be a fun spec which has a small margin of error and a high amount of survivability. So again, at the end of the tier, you can play what you want, but to start you should be frost.

Thanks for that. I haven't honestly given frost a try at all as I've never been interested in it but of course if it's hands down the go to spec at the beginning of the expansion I'll definitely work it out.

[Multigasm]

I agree that Frost is looking like the spec we will all be forced to start with. It's in some ways ironic that the spec we haven't been able to raid in since TBC is now the spec we have to use initially. Until we get the mana pool to support arcane and the stats needed to have favorable RnG to run fire we are forced to run frost. A little disappointed that there will be almost all frost mages and a few arcane here and there early, was hoping to truely see parody and mages of all specs raiding together.

As for the Arcane "rotation," I thought the intent of the redesigned Arcane Missles was that we would want to always use them when they proced regardless of stacks, did this change or just not come actually work out?

[jearle]

My mage is my second main and primary PvP toon. It will be fun to play PvE Frost for the first time in a long time. Hopefully they will keep the specs relatively close together even with the gear increase.