Frost vs Fire PVE -- Is one definitely better?

[Mehdi]

Running a 10 man guild, one of our mage's is convinced that frost is the best PVE spec - with the exception of encounters that require AOE.

Now, given the fact that I actually pay attention to class changes and read WorldOfLogs - I know that isn't true. Yet, he is quite stubborn. This doesn't help when we need every bit of DPS we can get moving forward.

Seeing as there are a bunch of mages in this section - do you have any recommendations for material I can give him?

[Kuni Zyrekai]

Running a 10 man guild, one of our mage's is convinced that frost is the best PVE spec - with the exception of encounters that require AOE.

Now, given the fact that I actually pay attention to class changes and read WorldOfLogs - I know that isn't true. Yet, he is quite stubborn. This doesn't help when we need every bit of DPS we can get moving forward.

Seeing as there are a bunch of mages in this section - do you have any recommendations for material I can give him?

If he's not listening to reason, proof on WoL, or proof from SimC, then you're not going to be able to talk him out of it anyway.

http://www.manoutoftime.org/misc/sc4...ong_basic.html Live, BiS ilvl 372 SimC results. 7 minute fight, no adds, no movement. Now, of course if he's better at frost than fire, you have an issue when the top end DPS is only a couple hundred apart. It really comes down to if he's pulling his weight as frost or not, and if he can play fire worth shit.

[Azioth]

I think Fire is better with higher iLvl but, let the dude play the spec he feels is better for him.

[takolin]

Reasons to go frost:

1: Unless you're having issues with enrage timers or healers having issues with mana because the boss dies to slow. Let him play what he want. Note that the ooming excuse is not valid if they healers aren't using the correct heals, if people are taking an excess of avoidable damage or if you're doing something wrong in the encouter.

2: If you need replenishment, frost is the only mage option (also brought by destrolocks, resto druid, shadow priests and Ret paladins).

3: A healing intensive encounter. It may be not a lot but keeping up ice barrier can reduce the stress on a healer (10k'ish each 24 seconds).

4: Adds need to be slowed down/kited. Frost is excellent at kiting around 1/2 targets and can AoE slow when they talent blizzard, though that makes them static.

5: High controllable burst damage is required: some encounter require burst on a predictable timer. Frost can DF each 30 seconds, FFO (lots of FoF procs) each minute. And if you only need 1 burst phase: DF/FFO/IV and cold snap are an excellent way to burst.

[LaplaceNoMa]

All simcrafts don't know shit about Ignite munching. That's why they show those numbers.

That being said, the DF nerf in 4.0.6 will bring frost to a lower level anyway.

Still, let's say your gear allows you to have the first haste plateu (soft cap) for fire, and about ~41% crit with critical mass and raid buff included (and glyphed molten of course). Then, with the same gear, you are able to have ~34% crit as frost after all possible buffs (excluding FM -- you're speaking about 10mans here, and having 2 mages in 10 man is simply retarded if one of them is arcane) for shatter crit cap. Your basic spellpower after all buffs is about 7-7.5k. You're hitcapped ofc.
Then we take a tank'n'spank fight like Chimaeron, and we assume you know the best way of playing fire and frost, you get the best combustions you can pull, you know how to manage your mana while still having 0 of it at the end of the fight (that's for fire). And you also don't lose a FoF proc when DF comes off cd, but you don't gain a FoF proc when you already have 2 up. You also use BF procs only with FoF. In other words, you're playing both specs flawlessly.

So, you've got this theoretical situation. Now, fuck simcrafts, you're going to make about 2k dps more with frost in this experiment. That's it.

[Imnick]

So, you've got this theoretical situation. Now, fuck simcrafts, you're going to make about 2k dps more with frost in this experiment. That's it.

Yeah! Fuck simcraft! I'll just believe some random person on the internet who hasn't provided any evidence at all!
Even loose sim evidence is better than your un-sourced bullshit. Just because you say that frost will do "2k" more DPS (a frankly ridiculous number) doesn't mean that it will.

If you want evidence that isn't "tainted" by the sims you hate so much, check world of logs. These are the records of real players playing in real boss encounters with a real fire spec and real, obtainable gear.
Fire wins hands down on basically every encounter.

[Carline]

Running a 10 man guild, one of our mage's is convinced that frost is the best PVE spec - with the exception of encounters that require AOE.

Now, given the fact that I actually pay attention to class changes and read WorldOfLogs - I know that isn't true. Yet, he is quite stubborn. This doesn't help when we need every bit of DPS we can get moving forward.

Seeing as there are a bunch of mages in this section - do you have any recommendations for material I can give him?

as a few posters already mentioned there are indeed some reasons to stick with frost, even when the sim's and WoL prove fire to be the highest dps specc (which it is atm)

a) frost brings incredible survivability - sure cauterize will bring an excellent survivability talent for fire too, but as frost you'll definitely take pressure of your healers, if playing properly

b) utility! ... 2x RoF, imp Blizzard, pet nova, replenishment, ...

c) massive amount of CONTROLLED burst (DF, IV, FFO (a lot of FoF Proccs), 2xFoF Charges using pet nova, ... if necessary use CS to really burst the shit out of everything), which is NOT provided by fire (not counting 2min combustion here, since i wouldn't say combustion is too controlled nowadays -> dependent on proccs/crit luck to get high numbers, if you're unlucky you won't have proccs/crit luck when needed ergo you won't have too much "controlled" burst, except for "burn rotation" which is 2,2sec FB casting and waiting for crits (with LB up of course)

d) mobility is provided too, ofc you'll not be able to cast while running, which is a very very strong advantage of fire (cause you NEVER have to stop casting) but since FoF IL and FoF FFB both are instant (and hit hard), frost mages have excellent mobility dps

conclusion: if your mage likes frost better and knows how to take advantage of the provided utility/burst, I'd let him play frost, cause he's probably worth more to your raid while playing frost well than playing fire bad (cause he's not enjoying it) - the gap between fire/frost isn't that big at all, especially if you're not in a highend progress raid, which i assume you're not (guess you wouldn't ask around here if you were...)
the gap gets huge on aoe encounters i guess (didn't check WoL on those special encounters, but i think that's common sense, since frost aoe is pretty weak^^) -> let him have a fire offspecc for aoe encounters, if you need additional aoe

this is my personal opinion and i myself play fire, because i enjoy it most, but as i stated above there are a couple of good reasons to stick with frost...


edit: please excuse grammer/spelling mistakes, ... english is not my mother tongue

[c4tuna]

All simcrafts don't know shit about Ignite munching. That's why they show those numbers.

That being said, the DF nerf in 4.0.6 will bring frost to a lower level anyway.

Still, let's say your gear allows you to have the first haste plateu (soft cap) for fire, and about ~41% crit with critical mass and raid buff included (and glyphed molten of course). Then, with the same gear, you are able to have ~34% crit as frost after all possible buffs (excluding FM -- you're speaking about 10mans here, and having 2 mages in 10 man is simply retarded if one of them is arcane) for shatter crit cap. Your basic spellpower after all buffs is about 7-7.5k. You're hitcapped ofc.
Then we take a tank'n'spank fight like Chimaeron, and we assume you know the best way of playing fire and frost, you get the best combustions you can pull, you know how to manage your mana while still having 0 of it at the end of the fight (that's for fire). And you also don't lose a FoF proc when DF comes off cd, but you don't gain a FoF proc when you already have 2 up. You also use BF procs only with FoF. In other words, you're playing both specs flawlessly.

So, you've got this theoretical situation. Now, fuck simcrafts, you're going to make about 2k dps more with frost in this experiment. That's it.

Simcraft draws its data directly from the game engine. You clearly have no idea what you're talking about.

[trickery]

All simcrafts don't know shit about Ignite munching. That's why they show those numbers.

That being said, the DF nerf in 4.0.6 will bring frost to a lower level anyway.

Still, let's say your gear allows you to have the first haste plateu (soft cap) for fire, and about ~41% crit with critical mass and raid buff included (and glyphed molten of course). Then, with the same gear, you are able to have ~34% crit as frost after all possible buffs (excluding FM -- you're speaking about 10mans here, and having 2 mages in 10 man is simply retarded if one of them is arcane) for shatter crit cap. Your basic spellpower after all buffs is about 7-7.5k. You're hitcapped ofc.
Then we take a tank'n'spank fight like Chimaeron, and we assume you know the best way of playing fire and frost, you get the best combustions you can pull, you know how to manage your mana while still having 0 of it at the end of the fight (that's for fire). And you also don't lose a FoF proc when DF comes off cd, but you don't gain a FoF proc when you already have 2 up. You also use BF procs only with FoF. In other words, you're playing both specs flawlessly.

So, you've got this theoretical situation. Now, fuck simcrafts, you're going to make about 2k dps more with frost in this experiment.
That's it.

What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this forum is now dumber for having listened to it. Please show us some solid proof, and may God have mercy on your soul.

[LaplaceNoMa]

Enjoy your perfect old-mechanic ignites which stay at the highest point they've reached for their whole duration 'in reality'. At least go and read some things stated by the authors of those sims themselves. And yeah, 'directly from game engine'. Aha. Keep speaking about other people's incomprehensable rambling after you've mentioned this phrase. I wonder why didn't it take the pyromaniac bug out of this 'game engine', hmm?

[Deleted]

So, you've got this theoretical situation. Now, fuck simcrafts, you're going to make about 2k dps more with frost in this experiment. That's it.

What your theoretical situation fails to take into consideration is our HS procs which impact our damage quite a lot. Your theoretical suggestion is out of place with the current logs of how mages perform. End of story.

[Tickspoon]

Actually he was right about Simcraft not accounting for Ignite munching. EJ folks estimate a 5% loss to Fire due to that.

Also basing your conclusions from Top 50 parses on World of Logs or whatever is completely wrong as well. Fire has much higher RNG (aka variance) than Frost, which means the Top XX numbers will be quite inflated. Not to mention that those numbers include the Pyromaniac bug which is fixed now.

Mostly it comes down to playstyle and experience with the spec. I find that Fire is more about planning ahead, while frost is more reactive.

[Fierae]

To be fair on him it's so close as the moment it's almost not really noticeable in lower gear.

[Deleted]

Also basing your conclusions from Top 50 parses on World of Logs or whatever is completely wrong as well. Fire has much higher RNG (aka variance) than Frost, which means the Top XX numbers will be quite inflated. Not to mention that those numbers include the Pyromaniac bug which is fixed now.

Which is why you look at the average.

[Mascotte]

Which is why you look at the average.

If part of your sample pool is invalid due to whatever change/fix the result of an average including that part is just as invalid.

[Freshouttajail]

Take it for what it's worth. I've been playing mage for several years now, mainly fire and frost, a bit of arcane but I gotta say I know my shit around when it comes to fire and frost but not so much about arcane.
ATM frost is kind of competitive. MUCH better than what it was in wrath. In most situations I don't think this guy seriously needs to respec to save the group, and I'd even go as far as betting he's not the lowest dps in the group. If that's the case then he's not the one you need to point fingers at. There's no reason to respec for more dps if he's not the lowest dps, get your weaker dps to improve first. They can do about as much dps anyways, useless to blame imbalance on mages being OP dps in PvE, it's not the case, they're fine.

But to answer, yes, fire does more dps, and I will explain a little something. First of all dont get me wrong, I'm not gonna say mage is hard to play, not by any mean. Fire is just a little notch more complex than frost because it has more thingies to pay attention to. Refresh living bomb, time in a scorch instead of casting half a fireball on dying mob (frostbolt casts fast so it's mathematically less of a problem), also scorch whenever he has to move instead of nothing, on trash use your fire blast proc accordingly, and on bosses use combustion at the right time to get the most out of it. None of this is complicated but someone who lvled frost and played it like 75% of the time may not be used to the fire mechanics and if too many little mistakes slip by and add up, he may end up doing less dps when he specs fire, therefore thinking frost has better dps.

[andrewgr]

First, I've written simulation programs for systems more complex than WoW that have been used for published research, and I've been a computer programmer for a major software vendor in Redmond WA for 15 years, so I believe I have a fairly decent grasp on the utility and shortcomings of simcraft tools such as rawr.

My own take on it is that they are useful guides, and that they can help to quickly and accurately understand large effects-- for example, that arcane spec is lagging way behind the other two specs, or that INT is now king, or that mastery and haste both lag behind crit. The magnitude of those results is large enough that I think it's pretty foolish to feel the need to spend a lot of time verifying them yourself, and if I wasn't seeing those results in practice (for example, if I was getting more DPS as arcane than as fire), my initial reaction would be to assume that I was doing something wrong, and try to figure out what it was and correct it. I think that's pretty useful.

Later on in the expansion, when there have been many months of empirical results from real world play that have been used to refine the models, and when the patches and hotfixes aren't making such big changes on such a frequent basis, I think that the tools become useful for more refined decisions. 6 months from now, I'll probably tend to trust rawr when it tells me that a third point in ignite is worth more than a third point in Netherwind Presence. But this early on, frankly, I don't trust it that much. I'll probably go with its recommendation as a starting point, but if someone tells me otherwise and can give any sort of a valid reason (even if it's just "I've experimented both ways"), I'm inclined to want to try it myself.

But even late in the cycle when I trust simcraft's math, I still believe that it's often misunderstood and mis-applied. How many people actually go into the tool and put in the actual buffs their guild raids with? That makes a *huge* difference to the results, much more than how you spend your last talent point or which gear your reforge to get your +hit or whatever. For that matter, how many of us are even lucky enough to be in a guild that runs with the same classes every week so that you can keep a constant set of buffs for comparison? During WotLK, more often than not my guild didn't even have a shammie, which meant no Bloodlust; you got way different simulation results for that, and I can guarantee you no one who's talking about "this spec is clearly the best" has bothered to run all the numbers with no bloodlust.

Another way that the results are often missapplied is by people being unwilling to admit that they don't play optimally. For myself, I know that I move too much. I am getting better, but I still move more than a top class mage should. I can plug that into rawr-- % of fight moving is configurable-- but how many people do? It changes the results by a fair amount, yet most people don't take stuff like that into account.

For myself, having spent most of Wrath playing arcane, most of my time leveling in Cata playing Frost, most of my heroics playing Fire, and now just having switched back to Frost for PvP and to start raiding, I can say that some combination of my play style (which may be sub-optimal), computer hardware (which may have more or less latency than average), non-standard party composition (we always have 2 mages, it's just our guild's player roster), etc., leads me to have much more fun playing Frost, and to have DPS that doesn't appear to be noticably different on average than when I play fire. For some bosses it's definitely higher, for some definitely lower, and for most about the same.

TL;DR : Unless you're in an ultra-competitive guild that's already doing hard mode raids, don't worry about DPS unless lack of DPS is causing you to get stuck, and if you're at that point, start with the folks at the bottom of the dps chart, not some random mage that you think is using the wrong spec because some smart folks on the internet claim he is.

[Deleted]

If part of your sample pool is invalid due to whatever change/fix the result of an average including that part is just as invalid.

I'm sorry? RNG affects top mages as much as it affects bottom mages. If you're talking about pyromaniac bug getting a fix then yes, you have a point.