Is it just me or is frost better than fire for right now

[Frozenshiva]

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ahara/advanced

This is my current character. As you can see, I'm fairly lucky with the drops, 353ilvl average. All the best chants for epics, for blues I've just used the best possible chants without maelstorm crystals.

Both specs are pve, I sometimes check the fire spec to see if it became better than frost whenever I upgrade my gear -- it still sux hard. I deal WAY more dps with frost as I am now.

all i can say is this. your reforging methods are quite questionable. you reforge stats out of items only to reforge them back on other items , on top of that you're over hit cap. not to mention you say you're playing frost yet you're dissing mastery all over the place.

[Deleted]

Spec depends on encounter and raid composition.
I've already played every spec during our hardmode raids, and each of them with few variations:
- fire aoe
- fire single target
- arcane with interrupt
- arcane with aoe
- frost
Sometimes I was required to play arcane for the 3% damage buff, sometimes I was required to play fire for 5% crit.

The OP said that he sees frost better after running many 5man dungeons, and it's hard to disagree with him. In 5 man dungeons, especially in average ~330-340 blue ilvl gear, when you have to CC a lot and nuke mobs one by one, frost will probably do the best damage. That's because frost has the best short single-target burst, with Icy Veins, pet nova, and Cold Snap. And it has good mana with Mage Armor. Arcane could do even better burst with AB spam, but with that blue gear you can't really spam AB for long yet.

However, with better gear and experienced party, if you can AOE most of the trash, 4+ mobs at a time, then Fire is going to be better, because Fire has right now the best AOE.


If you wonder about the best DPS in raids, then it's actually pretty simple:
- Halfus Wyrmbreaker: fire, because there are many adds to dps, you can multidot, pull off huge Combustion on Halfus (who takes increased damage) and spread it to adds and it's sooooooo beautiful... whole screen burning with huge yellow numbers!
- Omintron Defense System: arcane can top meters there, because of the buff you can spellsteal from Arcanotron, and the white pools on the ground which increase your damage by 50% and replenish your mana. Stack that with your CDs and burst phase, and it will skyrocket! However, fire with a bit of luck can do even more, if you manage to spread good Combustion from Toxitron to adds (toxic bombs).
- Maloriak: fire, because that fight is all about killing adds, and fire has the best aoe.
- Chimaeron: frost (or arcane), because first part of that fight is just healing and surviving, and you need sick burst for the last 25%, and frost has sick burst during 2x Icy Veins with Cold Snap.

And so on... every encounter is different. And not every is about "average dps".
There is for example Conclave of Wind, where Rohash has that shield which has 450k hp, which has to be burned within seconds, and frost mages are great for that job with their 100-140k instant Deep Freezes. Fire might probably do higher sustained dps during that fight, but if you can't break the shield, you won't kill the boss.

It becomes a bit more complicated if you want to compose a 25 man raid with best dps. Who should provide 3% dmg buff? How much DPS you need on adds? Etc.


In general, for now, Fire seems to be the best for most encounters. But there are encounters where Frost or Arcane is better.
There are three reasons why Fire in general is better:
1. it deals more sustained damage (even single-target).
2. it has better mobility (casting scorch while moving is great).
3. it has better survivability (Cauterize is fucking great, you can die, and still have 3 seconds to Iceblock, or pop Mage Ward, or eat Healthstone, or healers will just heal you.)


offtopic:
Flinchy wrote that arcane is going to be the best in the future, because it scales with mana pool, and mastery... I disagree. I think that fire scales the best with gear, because crit is in huge synergy with mastery and talents in fire spec. Critical hits in fire are just too strong, nothing is gonna beat that.


offtopic2:
I wouldn't entirely trust any of that simulators or formulators. They can have bugs, they can be just not accurate. They show some numbers for reference and it's good, I use them a lot and I follow their development, but:
- They are very poor at simulating aoe fights. Try to simulate Halfus Wyrmbreaker encounter, and try get 70k dps over 5 minutes in simcraft.
- I'd like to see some simulations with arcane mage equipped with (wowhead.com/item=60233) "Shard of Woe", item that reduces mana cost of AB-spam by 30%.
- Current encounters are often too complex. For example Omintron Defense System: you can spellsteal stacking buff from Arcanotron, and stand in Power Generator and stack it with CDs. There are adds spawning, and threat issues. Neither simcraft nor RAWR have models to simulate that fight.

The best way is just to wipe 10 times in one spec, then 10 times in other spec and figure out yourself. Or have 2 mages play different specs.


Cheers,
Notfur <Method> EU-Xavius

[Rhigo]

The graphs are for perfect movement-less fights and lag-free rotations, so that doesn't matter. Paragon and Ensidia's player are better than you, so that doesn't matter.

If you can personally do better damage as frost, while still contributing in other ways to groups, go frost. Period.

Who are you to judge weather a player is better than someone else ? just cause there in a guild that does server/world firsts ...

[Deleted]

.........
Notfur <Method> EU-Xavius

Your post was very useful, thanks a lot

[teh_anarchist]

Meah... regardless of spec, mages are just teh win, so why not just play whatever spec you like the most and if anyone crys, sheep their sorry ass. Have your offspec as the high dps spec until you have the gear to really rape tits then switch to it when needed?

[Rescuer]

Every Talent Point in the Fire Tree Counts, so make sure you didn't waste any point in any spell that you don't need/use in dungeons, With the right talent tree and knowing how to spread your living bomb, Fire Spec can be OP.

[nemex]

Closing this thread before it gets even more out of hand.

Be thankful that Mages have multiple specs that are comparable in DPS. Play whatever spec you want. Fire WILL scale the best with gear, but Frost and Arcane will always have their niche utilities that will be best for some encounters.

Notfur made a lot of good points, I suggest you read his response above.