When do the builds become viable?

[Deleted]

I know that people who come on here are told all the time to go fire because its the best, but it cant always be the best spec for heroics. I tried it soon after I got the gear levels for heroics and it was awful, Id go entire boss fights without proccing hot streak even though I'd reforged crit, swapped back to arcane and started doing well.

Im stuck now though, I can pull 10k dps on almost all boss fights with arcane in heroics if all goes well. I hate it though. The whole burn phase, conserve phase thing...if it goes wrong I get my entire fight screwed up, something grabs me and ruins evocate for instance...and in most boss fights Ill end up just getting the one evocate down so it really is ruined, plus its boring as hell.

When is best to swap to fire, is it a crit value? Ive not seen any threads saying when to use what, threads for levelling builds or raid builds are all over the place though. Ive been checking out elitist jerks every now and then, the guides are great and they definitely show the best way to play each spec...and I can see that fire is the optimum mage spec at the moment. No idea when it becomes so.

eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/jaedenar/gazme/simple Worth swapping fire? Ive already reglyphed and reforged to try stuff out loads of times, Id rather not if there's no point

What should I be hitting in heroics in terms of dps? I see people saying they get 12-13k with their builds...they dont tend to specify if its a boss with lots of movement Im nowhere near it, if theyre talking about raid buffed I could well be there already.

[dokki]

It depends on your gear..everyone says they do 12k+ in ilvl 333 gear but i highly doubt that. I believe there is a crit value where Fire will do the most DPS out of all specs, don't quote me on it though.

My ilvl is 343, 5423SP, 16.59% hit, 22.52% crit and I can probably do around 12-13k on a little to none movement fight, and it goes down from there.

Edit: Im Fire btw

[balastar1]

Well, I do 12k. I have 343ilvl, 6k SP, 4% haste, 24% crit, and 15% or so hit. As fire. I do 10.5k as frost, I also have about 15 mastery, which is good right now, dots tick harder, and fingers of frost procs do pretty good. I've seen 95k Deep freeze. I don't like arcane, never have lol.

[Arsene Lupin]

330 ilvl here. My stats as fire self buffed:

- 5-man hit capped
- 22.5% crit
- 4735 spell power
- 4.75% haste
- 14 Mastery

I do around 8k-10k in all boss fights. I nuke with scorch, so infinite mana and full rotation on the move :]

You will do much better with fire mate. You got great stats. Just reforge everything to crit (even hit, just don't go below 6% which is hit cap for 5 mans).

Also if you gonna do like me and nuke with scorch, use living bomb glyph instead of fireball glyph. I personally recommend it... the peace of mind will make you do better than the theoretical fireball increase.

[Torian kel]

Again, go frost. You'll have all your issues fixed, and do good dps, and make your group happy with your controls, and save some mana to your healers.

[TruffleMuffin]

I think you have asked a good question, but framed it poorly.

Specs become viable when they provide an increase to your DPS in a certain situation. While Arcane provides good DPS for stand still fights, you wont be doing so well when movement becomes involved or event multiple significant adds. Likewise, when survivability is the most dominant factor Frost is your best choice.

In a perfect world you could respec for each fight, however nothing is ever easy. You chose the spec that suits you for most dungeons and live with it. If you are not planning to raid, I imagine Frost is going to be very competitive for almost all dungeons for the foreseeable future due to its nice burst/control/survivability coupled with little ramp up time and easy to maintain mana.

For raids, you have to pick a spec and stick with it, each spec requires a complete re-gem/re-forge to get the best out of it (which with the reduced combat ratings is absolutely necessary). This is insanely expensive and practically challenging.

For the moment, you should be able to do 10k DPS at minimum on a boss fight in a dungeon. I am speaking here in a generality, but 10k I think would be a minimum for every encounter provided you had fair skill and decent gear/gems/enchants/reforge properly.

For raids, I think the idea for the moment is to provide competitive damage. Mages took a severe nerf with the combat ratings because (imo) a Mages DPS is more dependant on secondary stats (crit/haste) rather than Intellect (which other casters favour). There are a few reason for that I think, but thats really outside the scope of the thread. So back on topic! I am doing well in most raids, as are the other 2 Mages in my guild. We are a combination of all 3 specs (depending on the encounter, one is frost/fire). Specs with movement/multiple adds (read all of them for the moment, and we have cleared 7/12 25man) are favouring Fire (I am doing consistently about 1-2k DPS more than the Arcane Mage). In a raid encounter, you should be looking to be in the top 8/10 of DPS assuming equivalent gear etc, because you can perform at that level with the right spec and fight. But, I wouldn't expect to top any damage meters any time soon.

Hope that helps

[Kuni Zyrekai]

It depends on your gear..everyone says they do 12k+ in ilvl 333 gear but i highly doubt that.

http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/8691/dps.png

I'm frost. First boss of Grim Batol. Crit cap is a wonderful thing.

[ProTech]

Likewise, when survivability is the most dominant factor Frost is your best choice.

Why is that? Ice Barrier is really bad at cataclysm health levels, I think it absorbs around 10k damage glyphed (this is what I observed no math involved). With 50k damages flying around this is really not much. You can also use Ice Block twice with Cold Snap, but I usually use that as a dps cooldown at the beginning of the fight. You can kite and control adds better as frost, but I did not used that much in heroics yet. We either sheep the mob, or kill them fast, not much kiting it around.

On the other hand Cauterize is awesome as fire, it saved my ass a couple of times, and you could survive a 100k damage with it easily. You just have to activate Mage Ward after it procced. Plus if there are lots of adds, I like to use fire for the AoE power better, than frost for kiting them around.

So I would say that fire has better survivability than frost, at least for dungeons and probably raids to but did not tried those yet. I use frost in dungeons as fire is frustrating with low crit levels, but for survivability I would choose fire.

[TruffleMuffin]

Why is that? Ice Barrier is really bad at cataclysm health levels, I think it absorbs around 10k damage glyphed (this is what I observed no math involved). With 50k damages flying around this is really not much.

Scales with SP AFAIK. It is also 10k more than Fire. If you are taking 50k damage hits in a heroic dungeon, you are doing it very, very wrong. Survivability here means unavoidable damage is somehow dissipated. Ice Barrier provides that, you next point about Cauterise is valid, but you take further damage afterwards so is less effective than a straight 20k absorb (mana barrier + ice barrier).

You can also use Ice Block twice with Cold Snap, but I usually use that as a dps cooldown at the beginning of the fight. You can kite and control adds better as frost, but I did not used that much in heroics yet. We either sheep the mob, or kill them fast, not much kiting it around.

Ice Block stops you gaining threat for 9s and if you are targeted by the boss will mean he targets the next person down on threat, once it fades your threat returns. Invisibility will drop your threat to 0, this is your DPS cooldown.

On the other hand Cauterize is awesome as fire, it saved my ass a couple of times, and you could survive a 100k damage with it easily.

You can also survive 1k damage with it, its there for when you have failed to stop damage to save your ass, but then as before, the healer still has to keep you up.

Plus if there are lots of adds, I like to use fire for the AoE power better, than frost for kiting them around.

This is why I said fire for multiple add encounters.

So I would say that fire has better survivability than frost, at least for dungeons and probably raids to but did not tried those yet. I use frost in dungeons as fire is frustrating with low crit levels, but for survivability I would choose fire.

Fire does not have better survivability, but it is stronger in multi add fights. If Fire had better survivability it would be the PvP spec of choice.