4 pc Tier 10 Arcane or Fire better?

[Chilidog]

Simple question, do you think Arcane or Fireball traditional specs will be better for the 4 pc bonus? I've heard Arcane is king up to a 4 pc set, but then Fireball ends up as more dps.

[Valanna]

Where did you hear that?

It's quite obvious that arcane will take most profit from the 4 pt bonus, as they have more cooldowns to work as coefficients to the 18% extra damage, IV, AP, etc etc. whereas fire only has combustion.

[Swizzle]

i guess you mean using it with combustion during the execute phase? theoretically that would be a nice damage boost, but i don't think it would outweigh arcane's CD usage, or its shorter cast times for that matter.

[Lifereaver]

I doubt that set bonus is going to close a gap or even put fire anywhere near the potential output for arcane.

[Swizzle]

let's find out!!!

arcane
42% for 15 seconds every 180 seconds
18% for 15 seconds every 180 seconds

15/180= 1/12
42x(1/12)= 3.5%

15/180= 1/12
18x(1/12)= 1.5%

with AP, it would provide a 5%-5.25% increase in damage.
fire

1.12x1.18= 1.3216~ 32.16% more damage
32.16% for 30 seconds every 180 seconds

32.16x(1/6)= 5.36%

the set bonus would give fire specs a 5.36% damage increase during molten fury, without combustion being factored in.

going off of that alone, it would make it seem like during sub-35% HP phases, the set bonus would be better for fire, but by only 0.36-0.11%.

[Havök]

having played both in a 25 man raiding environment i can say WITHOUT A DOUBT THAT ARCANE DOES MORE DAMAGE. the problem is most LK fights either require a lot of movement, which arcane is better at coping with (barrage, f blast, barrage). i ran fire for about a month and despite one or two attempts where i blew everyone out of the water with lucky hot streak procs (at the time running 45% crit unbuffed) i found a gain of about 1-2k DPS PER BOSS. the problem with fire is there are far less cool-downs that you can coordinate with things like heroism, or just chain together in general to keep up/spike your DPS, on demand damage buffs (and arcane has a lot of powerful ones) will always beat static damage. and let me tell you relying on hot streak procs will leave you mildly angry, especially when you have to switch DPS to adds, because of the long fireball cast.

as for the comment about the 2 piece and the haste, that is what i originally theory crafted around that would make fire better, but you either
a) don't get enough hot streak procs to keep it up
and
b) if you use the now standard Blast, Blast, Blast, Blast, Missile rotation you should have the haste from pushing the limit apply to all 4 arcane blasts

unless you somehow manage to stack crit and get up to 90% or over raid buffed, i do not ever see fire being able to out DPS arcane.

[Skarrd]

having played both in a 25 man raiding environment i can say WITHOUT A DOUBT THAT ARCANE DOES MORE DAMAGE. the problem is most LK fights either require a lot of movement, which arcane is better at coping with (barrage, f blast, barrage). i ran fire for about a month and despite one or two attempts where i blew everyone out of the water with lucky hot streak procs (at the time running 45% crit unbuffed) i found a gain of about 1-2k DPS PER BOSS. the problem with fire is there are far less cool-downs that you can coordinate with things like heroism, or just chain together in general to keep up/spike your DPS, on demand damage buffs (and arcane has a lot of powerful ones) will always beat static damage. and let me tell you relying on hot streak procs will leave you mildly angry, especially when you have to switch DPS to adds, because of the long fireball cast.

as for the comment about the 2 piece and the haste, that is what i originally theory crafted around that would make fire better, but you either
a) don't get enough hot streak procs to keep it up
and
b) if you use the now standard Blast, Blast, Blast, Blast, Missile rotation you should have the haste from pushing the limit apply to all 4 arcane blasts

unless you somehow manage to stack crit and get up to 90% or over raid buffed, i do not ever see fire being able to out DPS arcane.

Fire is actually much better at coping with movement if you aren't bad, Arcane does zero dps while moving and has no instant spells in it's highest dps rotation. Fire has two, and one is a dot. I ran fire for a week just to see where I stood, I sit at a rather high crit level in my fire gear, though I'm not sure where exactly off the top of my head. Hot streak procs were not hard to find, and I never had to move without either a HS proc to use or a LB to apply. With that said, fire just does overall less dps, and it would take a decent buff to put it back in line with arcane.

[Lifereaver]

Arcane does zero dps while moving and has no instant spells in it's highest dps rotation.

Highest DPS rotation? Does that mean that fire highest DPS rotation has fireblast in it? No it doesn't but if you have to move you use it. Same as Arcane. We use Abarr (if in spec) and fireblast too. Yes there is no dot from ignite or LB tick but it still does more damage that fire on most boss fights hands down.

I like fire better and when the DPS is marginal I will run fire but when numbers count I rely on arcane.

[Skarrd]

Highest DPS rotation? Does that mean that fire highest DPS rotation has fireblast in it? No it doesn't but if you have to move you use it. Same as Arcane. We use Abarr (if in spec) and fireblast too. Yes there is no dot from ignite or LB tick but it still does more damage that fire on most boss fights hands down.

I like fire better and when the DPS is marginal I will run fire but when numbers count I rely on arcane.

I have almost never had to use fireblast when I moved as fire, unless you count kiting snaplashers, but I used ice lance there, too. I was fire through all of ulduar, and it is very easy to have a hot streak proc up for movement. Arcane does not have this luxury. Sure, they both have a spell not in their rotation that they can use, however, arcane ONLY has this, and it also drops your stacks and is a dps loss in that case. I find 9 times out of 10 I am better off keeping my blast stacks during movement than I would be if i used barrage. Fire does not have this problem. I'm not trying to say fire doesn't have a spell outside of it's rotation that it may have to use, but it is avoidable and damage still happens. This is not so as arcane.

[Swizzle]

I have almost never had to use fireblast when I moved as fire, unless you count kiting snaplashers, but I used ice lance there, too. I was fire through all of ulduar, and it is very easy to have a hot streak proc up for movement. Arcane does not have this luxury. Sure, they both have a spell not in their rotation that they can use, however, arcane ONLY has this, and it also drops your stacks and is a dps loss in that case. I find 9 times out of 10 I am better off keeping my blast stacks during movement than I would be if i used barrage. Fire does not have this problem. I'm not trying to say fire doesn't have a spell outside of it's rotation that it may have to use, but it is avoidable and damage still happens. This is not so as arcane.

the redundancy...she hurts my brains.

anyway, fire wins out on HEAVY movement fights with a significant molten fury duration, whereas arcane wins out on fights that call for controlled burst phases and less movement.

[PvE_Mage]

I do 13K DPS (for around 30 seconds) with AP/trinket/IV/potion

of course I pop all this at the beginning of the fight and for 30 secs there is no chance I will aggro. Potion I pop a second before combat engages.

there's no way you could do that with fire

[Swizzle]

I do 13K DPS (for around 30 seconds) with AP/trinket/IV/potion

of course I pop all this at the beginning of the fight and for 30 secs there is no chance I will aggro. Potion I pop a second before combat engages.

there's no way you could do that with fire

i probably could. no offense, but a 13k DPS during all your CD up-time is relatively low. my sustained DPS during CDs is usually 17-18k, tapering off to 11-12l for the duration of the fight, sans movement of course.

[Mikki]

i probably could. no offense, but a 13k DPS during all your CD up-time is relatively low. my sustained DPS during CDs is usually 17-18k, tapering off to 11-12l for the duration of the fight, sans movement of course.

LOL Swizzle Link it or it didnt happen

As for you post replying to Skard I dont see why you are callingit redundant? He was just pointing out that Streak & LB are in the top DPS rotation of fire while arcane instants are ofc not.

I am more a parttime Raider so my gear is no longer top end but I would love to see you logs of you topping 18k and tapering off to 12k in ICC? Or are you talking about ToC

[edit] Here are Top mage DPS logs for fights in ICC for mages. There are the top recorded and will be by mages with (until HMs opened) pretty much BiS all over....http://www.wowmeteronline.com/rank/clazz/dtb/mag/9/0/3

[Swizzle]

I have almost never had to use fireblast when I moved as fire, unless you count kiting snaplashers, but I used ice lance there, too. I was fire through all of ulduar, and it is very easy to have a hot streak proc up for movement. Arcane does not have this luxury. Sure, they both have a spell not in their rotation that they can use, however, arcane ONLY has this, and it also drops your stacks and is a dps loss in that case.

compared to

I find 9 times out of 10 I am better off keeping my blast stacks during movement than I would be if i used barrage. Fire does not have this problem. I'm not trying to say fire doesn't have a spell outside of it's rotation that it may have to use, but it is avoidable and damage still happens. This is not so as arcane.

[Skarrd]

Being redundant is necessary for understanding on mmo forums. I do not feel bad for this.

[Beasterbrown]

[edit] Here are Top mage DPS logs for fights in ICC for mages. There are the top recorded and will be by mages with (until HMs opened) pretty much BiS all over....http://www.wowmeteronline.com/rank/clazz/dtb/mag/9/0/3

I am 7th on mage listing for Festergut dps as of this post. Average dps of almost 13k for the fight, exactly like the other guy said. My DPS spikes over 30,000 at the start of the fight.
http://www.wowmeteronline.com/combat...98908#realtime
edit: I do not consider myself to be in BIS gear... but close I guess.

Anyway, back on topic, Fire will not be the best option on any fight in ICC except maybe Lich King if you are low on AoE for phase 3.


edit: It is true to say that fire will do more dps on the Lich King encounter than arcane, however, it will be damage that is not needed. The encounter is heavy on ads, but from my experience, in my raid, we have enough AoE going on and do not want fire mages. We are struggling more with the single target burn phase that is the Valkyr. Therefore its true that in the end(LK encounter) fire does more dps than arcane, but that does not mean it is the best option for the fight.

[Skarrd]

edit: It is true to say that fire will do more dps on the Lich King encounter than arcane, however, it will be damage that is not needed. The encounter is heavy on ads, but from my experience, in my raid, we have enough AoE going on and do not want fire mages. We are struggling more with the single target burn phase that is the Valkyr. Therefore its true that in the end(LK encounter) fire does more dps than arcane, but that does not mean it is the best option for the fight.

We fail pretty hard at val'kyr, but I think our problem is a lack of stuns moreso than dps. We're just getting better at dpsing them as we do more pulls, but we haven't been to P3 to say if we need aoe there or not. We run 3 shadow priests, so mind sear / dots / pestilence will hopefully do a decent job at killing spirits. I'm carrying a ffb spec with me just in case we get there and need some LB. I'm also gonna run FFB in my 10 man for LB / valkyr snare.

[rathofvol]

We fail pretty hard at val'kyr, but I think our problem is a lack of stuns moreso than dps. We're just getting better at dpsing them as we do more pulls, but we haven't been to P3 to say if we need aoe there or not. We run 3 shadow priests, so mind sear / dots / pestilence will hopefully do a decent job at killing spirits. I'm carrying a ffb spec with me just in case we get there and need some LB. I'm also gonna run FFB in my 10 man for LB / valkyr snare.

I tried both out tonight on LK 10m, I'd have to say arcane was better for the raid. Like a previous poster said, alot of the LB aoe splash damage isn't necessary. We had 2 pallys so valkyr were stunned for a very long time between Holy Wrath and Hammer of Justice, and a dk to follow those up with a CoI. Sadly, we were failing to badly on the 2nd transition to get him down

Back on topic tho; overall I'd reckon its a bit better for arcane. Its rather marginal though, and isn't something that is going to make arcane so much stronger than it already is compared to fire.

[Swizzle]

We fail pretty hard at val'kyr, but I think our problem is a lack of stuns moreso than dps. We're just getting better at dpsing them as we do more pulls, but we haven't been to P3 to say if we need aoe there or not. We run 3 shadow priests, so mind sear / dots / pestilence will hopefully do a decent job at killing spirits. I'm carrying a ffb spec with me just in case we get there and need some LB. I'm also gonna run FFB in my 10 man for LB / valkyr snare.

i will now admit to the most epic fail i have ever committed. a few weeks ago, i respecced pvp frost to have some fun with buddies in BGs. i then respecced that spec fire and kept it fire ever since then. i've been using that fire spec for ToGC anub insanity runs and any other chance i got to use it, along with lich king progression. for some reason, my DPS as fire was lower than i remembered, but i was still being competitive on the meters.

tonight, my friend wanted to do some 2s, so i decided to respec my fire spec pvp frost again to...arena. i bought the glyphs and all and respecced blah blah blah, but when i went to put the glyphs in, i noticed that i already had them in. first i thought that i had quite possibly the quickest hands in all of christendom, being able to fully reglyph before even my own mind registered the action.

then i realized that for the past few weeks, i had been using a TtW/fire build...with frost pvp glyphs. it wasn't a facepalm or a head deask moment...it was a find-a-puppy-to-kick moment. the worst part is...i was competitive on LK with this shitty glyph set-up. too bad i don't need fire for LK anymore, seeing as how we've perfected our p1 phase and have the valks down on lock.

just thought the people here would like to see how big a retard i can actually be.







ANYWHO, arcane is still the ideal spec for this fight, albeit only so if you adjust your rotation to basically use mbarr every proc, and try to never push for ab4mbarr unless it is during a burn period or the period spent under cooldowns.