Frost vs Fire pve

[Karon]

I'd say play arcane, the only problem about it is that it is "harder" to play.

With the RoP Buff the specc even allows good movement.

(Harder = much more unforgiving if you drop your mana too low, than, for example, if you have a low combustion)

And as long as you don't raid at 8/14HC+ you won't need the movement of the Fire specc.

[Akraen]

Statistics are created from data. The data may be pure, but the statistics are skewed.

If you want to compare the specs, compare the data. Do DPET & regression testing for the three specs.

You can't go by sims, because sims actually put frost ahead. Hell, look at this: http://www.wowprogress.com/simdps/us...ge/class.mage/

You honestly think that's accurate?

So how about raidbots, let's take a simple fight like Malkorok. I pick Malkorok because there won't be log-range issues, no special tasks, no alternate realms, no advantage to any spec, as any of the 3 specs can do the mechanics with minimal sacrifice to rotational function.

Arcane: a well timed Arc. Barr. would cleave onto adds nicely, could inflate #'s slightly with multidot
Fire: a well timed Combustion could inflate #'s slightly
Frost: a well timed Frozen Orb & icicle cleave could inflate #'s slightly

Pretty even advantages so let's begin some analysis:

Going to get the top 5 parses from US/EU and strike out the outliers. Why top 5? Well, I think your goal here is to know what's "best" right?

Frost:
1 Мишарики DPSe: 441519 Time: 04:53
Drjayfisto DPSe: 429776 Time: 4:47 - Received Tricks
2 Natubob DPSe: 423190 Time: 4:30
3 Adamas DPSe: 414621 Time: 4:40
4 Pete DPSe: 414621 Time: 5:02
Feylaa DPSe: 411877 Time: 5:28 - Received Tricks
5 Xiaozhii DPSe: 411531 Time: 4:49

Fire:
Jamiex DPSe: 558779 Time: 0:52 - Bogus parse
Runlikêhell DPSe: 480081 Time: 4:19 - Received Tricks
1 Karqon DPSe: 448802 Time: 4:32
2 Milks DPSe: 447131 Time: 4:23
3 Orby DPSe: 446829 Time: 4:11
4 Sfougz DPSe: 439730 Time: 4:24
Paybax DPSe: 430785 Time: 5:08 - Received Tricks
5 Dewgong DPSe: 429128 Time: 4:53

Fire mages are in better guilds statistically and appear to have better kill times. So let's calculate how much DPS(e) per second they did. So let's find the average Malkorok kill time for all the 10 frost and fire mages, and normalize each fight to that duration and see how it impacts DPSe.

Duration / AvgDuration = Norm.DPS / DPSe

So the new rank list becomes:
If each of them had a fight length of 4 minutes 37 seconds

Frost:
1. Мишарики 467022
2. Pete 452042
3. Xiaozhii 429359
4. Adamas 419112
5. Natubob 412496

Average DPS of top 5 frost mages: 436006

Fire:
1. Dewgong 453915
2. Karqon 440701
3. Milks 424532
4. Sfougz 419093
5. Orby 404888

Average DPS of top 5 fire mages: 428626

But if you look at raidbots, this is what you see:


Which is bad, because this is a much more accurate way of looking at it. And oh! Look! They're really close to each other and alternate Frost/Fire/Frost/Fire/etc


But no, you guys won't put more than 5 seconds of thought into something before coming to a conclusion. As I said before, old mindsets die hard.

[Deleted]

You said statistics are skewed and after that you try to do some comparison with 5 samples.

Apart from that to compare the average in a distribution of data like this (which is not a normal distribution) is not the way to go. Median is a much close value to reality [0]. Go to raidbots and see median... Like I said before for me raidbots values are not the answer for everything, but if you want to compare specs using wol data, frost is the worst by far in that scenario.


[0] For example when you see some study about salary of some country, the meaningful data is the median, not the average (because again, those samples are not a normal distribution).

[Akraen]

You said statistics are skewed and after that you try to do some comparison with 5 samples.

Apart from that to compare the average in a distribution of data like this (which is not a normal distribution) is not the way to go. Median is a much close value to reality [0]. Go to raidbots and see median... Like I said before for me raidbots values are not the answer for everything, but if you want to compare specs using wol data, frost is the worst by far in that scenario.


[0] For example when you see some study about salary of some country, the meaningful data is the median, not the average (because again, those samples are not a normal distribution).

No, that's simply not true. Median is going to be calculated with outliers. Unless you can remove the outliers then it is very bad data. Mean is also bad, because it's not excluding outliers. If you do remove them, it's still bad data. If you normalize the kill times and remove all people who have tricks, then it's better data.

But even then it's not accurate data. Even what I presented isn't accurate (but it's a lot closer than raidbots).

You can't sim it.
You can't go by logs.
You can't use DPET calcs.
You can't use DPS calcs.

The point is that the specs are too close. If you say fire is better, you're wrong. If you say frost is better, you're wrong. Assuming equal skill, in the same raid group with as many constants as you can, you still will never have enough samples to determine which is "higher" DPS.

The fact that people still think that this isn't the case is exhausting.

[Ponkster]

No, that's simply not true. Median is going to be calculated with outliers. Unless you can remove the outliers then it is very bad data. Mean is also bad, because it's not excluding outliers. If you do remove them, it's still bad data. If you normalize the kill times and remove all people who have tricks, then it's better data.

But even then it's not accurate data. Even what I presented isn't accurate (but it's a lot closer than raidbots).

You can't sim it.
You can't go by logs.
You can't use DPET calcs.
You can't use DPS calcs.

The point is that the specs are too close. If you say fire is better, you're wrong. If you say frost is better, you're wrong. Assuming equal skill, in the same raid group with as many constants as you can, you still will never have enough samples to determine which is "higher" DPS.

The fact that people still think that this isn't the case is exhausting.

I cannot for the life of me understand why people are so thick skinned that they can't accept that two different specs can provide similar results, its called balance, which is what fire/frost are.

Frost is competitive with fire on almost all fights, two top tier mage players will do similar results with either spec, people need to accept this and move on. Paragons mage plays frost aswell as arcane, mostly because the damage isn't that much further behind arcane.

[Deleted]

They are both extremely RNG reliant to the point where they can be very underperforming. Frost tends to be slightly less RNG reliant so is say frost > fire due to how much crit is involved with fire.

[Deleted]

They are both extremely RNG reliant to the point where they can be very underperforming. Frost tends to be slightly less RNG reliant so is say frost > fire due to how much crit is involved with fire.

Everything in this game is RNG reliant. Can we stop using this as an argument for viability? We are not discussing 30% crit fire mages, we are discussing top mages, who possess pretty much BiS gear.

[Abhorsen]

Yeah, the only RNG thing about Fire these days is whether or not my stupid Purified Bindings of Immerseus procs before I Alter Time (or if it procs inside it). In Heroics for this tier I've found Arcane has some fights it's useful on, but on the majority of them Fire is the way to go in my opinion. It gives you very strong movement, which is something that is amazingly helpful when first learning a heroic encounter.

[Deleted]

*with good RNG

It can swing lower than frost and you know it. Even if it has higher potential, which it does. Frost is more consistent and only slightly lower.

Except that's simply not true. Fire is very consistant, RNG barely plays a factor in high enough gear. For example today, I get terrible RNG on siegecrafter heroic, not getting crits for first 5 seconds, almost losing trinket procs before I even got a HU+HS up, only getting 5 pyros out of it with 2 of them without procs, yet my end result of the fight was barely any lower than usual at all.

If you're in 565+ gear there's zero question whether fire or frost is better. Arcane/fire is more questionable, and it comes down to the fight and whether it's progress or farm IMO.

Not to mention fire is simply better at mechanics on practically every single fight in SoO. Easier mobility, more room for error (which, no matter how good you are, is nice for progress) and outshines frost on the only hard fights in SoO by miles. (Siegecrafter and Garrosh)

Yea, at this point you can get away with playing frost since any guild that makes it to Garrosh now "outgears" it compared to Method/Paragon, so feel free to play whatever you want, but saying frost is *better* in near BiS is wrong.

[Deleted]

No, that's simply not true. Median is going to be calculated with outliers. Unless you can remove the outliers then it is very bad data. Mean is also bad, because it's not excluding outliers.

With that statement, nothing more to add. It's useless try to reason with you.

[Deztru]

Fire is good with the correct gear
Arcane is good with the correct gear

Frost is the easiest one to collect gear to since it handles pretty much anything, and collecting the perfect frost gear comes really close to perfect fire and arcane.

[Deleted]

Fire is good with the correct gear
Arcane is good with the correct gear

Frost is the easiest one to collect gear to since it handles pretty much anything, and collecting the perfect frost gear comes really close to perfect fire and arcane.

Arcane and frost will easily outdo fire in most scenarios. Getting top dps as fire only really means you had good enough RNG to get a crazy amount of crits.

[xiaozhi40]

Statistics are created from data. The data may be pure, but the statistics are skewed.

If you want to compare the specs, compare the data. Do DPET & regression testing for the three specs.

You can't go by sims, because sims actually put frost ahead. Hell, look at this: http://www.wowprogress.com/simdps/us...ge/class.mage/

You honestly think that's accurate?

So how about raidbots, let's take a simple fight like Malkorok. I pick Malkorok because there won't be log-range issues, no special tasks, no alternate realms, no advantage to any spec, as any of the 3 specs can do the mechanics with minimal sacrifice to rotational function.

Arcane: a well timed Arc. Barr. would cleave onto adds nicely, could inflate #'s slightly with multidot
Fire: a well timed Combustion could inflate #'s slightly
Frost: a well timed Frozen Orb & icicle cleave could inflate #'s slightly

Pretty even advantages so let's begin some analysis:

Going to get the top 5 parses from US/EU and strike out the outliers. Why top 5? Well, I think your goal here is to know what's "best" right?

Frost:
1 Мишарики DPSe: 441519 Time: 04:53
Drjayfisto DPSe: 429776 Time: 4:47 - Received Tricks
2 Natubob DPSe: 423190 Time: 4:30
3 Adamas DPSe: 414621 Time: 4:40
4 Pete DPSe: 414621 Time: 5:02
Feylaa DPSe: 411877 Time: 5:28 - Received Tricks
5 Xiaozhii DPSe: 411531 Time: 4:49

Fire:
Jamiex DPSe: 558779 Time: 0:52 - Bogus parse
Runlikêhell DPSe: 480081 Time: 4:19 - Received Tricks
1 Karqon DPSe: 448802 Time: 4:32
2 Milks DPSe: 447131 Time: 4:23
3 Orby DPSe: 446829 Time: 4:11
4 Sfougz DPSe: 439730 Time: 4:24
Paybax DPSe: 430785 Time: 5:08 - Received Tricks
5 Dewgong DPSe: 429128 Time: 4:53

Fire mages are in better guilds statistically and appear to have better kill times. So let's calculate how much DPS(e) per second they did. So let's find the average Malkorok kill time for all the 10 frost and fire mages, and normalize each fight to that duration and see how it impacts DPSe.

Duration / AvgDuration = Norm.DPS / DPSe

So the new rank list becomes:
If each of them had a fight length of 4 minutes 37 seconds

Frost:
1. Мишарики 467022
2. Pete 452042
3. Xiaozhii 429359
4. Adamas 419112
5. Natubob 412496

Average DPS of top 5 frost mages: 436006

Fire:
1. Dewgong 453915
2. Karqon 440701
3. Milks 424532
4. Sfougz 419093
5. Orby 404888

Average DPS of top 5 fire mages: 428626

But if you look at raidbots, this is what you see:


Which is bad, because this is a much more accurate way of looking at it. And oh! Look! They're really close to each other and alternate Frost/Fire/Frost/Fire/etc


But no, you guys won't put more than 5 seconds of thought into something before coming to a conclusion. As I said before, old mindsets die hard.

That is a amazing analyze!

However, if you can just look at the dps to boss itself instead of the overall dps because frost mage's ice lance could cleave off the adds and that adds a lot to frost mage's overall dps, I believe I had 15 mil dmg on adds but I am still first on dmg to boss itself.(Think I did like 6 mil to adds when I was fire on that fight)
btw frost is awesome on heroic siege.

[Zatetic]

I dont personally think frost is the 'easiest' spec.

It has the highest APM by far because of how haste heavy it is. That alone makes it much more fast paced and easier to lose track of than a slower spec like arcane or fire.

At the end of the day though, it is all muscle memory. Easy or hard it doesnt matter because you arent consciously performing your rotation.

[Akraen]

With that statement, nothing more to add. It's useless try to reason with you.

Have you ever taken a course in statistics?

A median is a slice in the middle of the frequency. I think you had a lovely idea of trying to suggest the median would prove something but it just doesn't for two reasons:

1) You're not removing outliers first (middle is middle of the set, unless you're plotting box/whiskers)
2) We're not comparing average dps here, we're comparing the spec's potential

I'm not the one difficult to reason with here. I'm right and you're not prepared to admit it. If you still think fire is higher DPS than frost no matter what, you're wrong. Flat out wrong. If you're tired of attempting to reason with me, please leave. There's nothing I'd like more than the unreasonable fire mages to disappear from these forums forever.

- - - Updated - - -

That is a amazing analyze!

However, if you can just look at the dps to boss itself instead of the overall dps because frost mage's ice lance could cleave off the adds and that adds a lot to frost mage's overall dps, I believe I had 15 mil dmg on adds but I am still first on dmg to boss itself.(Think I did like 6 mil to adds when I was fire on that fight)
btw frost is awesome on heroic siege.

Fire multidots and spreads combustion.

Look, I'm not trying to prove frost is better. I'm trying to prove only one simple thing:

If someone has to ask which spec is better, they would never be getting to the point where they would notice the difference between the two because they are more balanced than they have ever been before and I am sick and tired of having to prove this over and over from constantly different angles.

[Vedel]

I rarely post on these forums, but this is driving me insane. Every time I see a "What spec should I play?" or a "Frost vs. Arcane" or "Frost vs. Fire" the thread turns out to be a debate over which specialization has a higher potential output. The question that should be asked is which specialization are you better at playing? All of the specs are close enough together that the only difference in their respective output is your ability to play them. I have been playing a mage in hardcore progression raiding since the start of SoO so I am by no means an expert mage player. I do know a lot about theorycrafting since I was a protection paladin for almost 6 years. I can't play an arcane mage without making a mistake with my mana, I can't play fire without making a mistake with a combustion but I can play a frost mage really well (I don't play the haste build, I hate having casts under the gcd). I compete with the rest of my mage as frost, sure I get pressure to switch to arcane or fire. But right now I can compete on any fight where I don't have deal with a stupid mechanic(engineers are Garrosh). That's all that matters. If you can put out good numbers it doesn't matter what specialization you are. We had an rogue in dragon soul who hates subtelty so he played assassination he still pulled good numbers. Bascially PLAY THE SPEC YOU ARE BEST AT!

On the topic of gear, if you have 4 piece tier 16 you can play any spec and compete. I have a mastery/haste heavy build but since the tier has so much crit I can play fire and still compete with everyone else in my raid. Gear is not as big a factor in which specialization you should be playing. If you suck balls at fire your going to do more damage in a crit based arcane or a crit based frost build.

[Deleted]

The median doesn't prove anything, the mean doesn't prove anything. But of those two values (when you've not a normal distribution) the mean is the most wrong one (you learn this the first day on a normal statistics course when you learn about moments) and also the most popular and used one by people without basic math knowledge.

You want to compare potential of the spec on malkorok (according to you the best fight to do so). Then let's see top100 parses, shall we?



But well, if you want to select the samples so the result meets your desires, be my guest. I don't want to hurt your ego.

Apart from this nonsense topic, the answer to this thread to the original author is: go frost with your current gear.

[Zatetic]

I rarely post on these forums, but this is driving me insane. Every time I see a "What spec should I play?" or a "Frost vs. Arcane" or "Frost vs. Fire" the thread turns out to be a debate over which specialization has a higher potential output. The question that should be asked is which specialization are you better at playing? All of the specs are close enough together that the only difference in their respective output is your ability to play them. I have been playing a mage in hardcore progression raiding since the start of SoO so I am by no means an expert mage player. I do know a lot about theorycrafting since I was a protection paladin for almost 6 years. I can't play an arcane mage without making a mistake with my mana, I can't play fire without making a mistake with a combustion but I can play a frost mage really well (I don't play the haste build, I hate having casts under the gcd). I compete with the rest of my mage as frost, sure I get pressure to switch to arcane or fire. But right now I can compete on any fight where I don't have deal with a stupid mechanic(engineers are Garrosh). That's all that matters. If you can put out good numbers it doesn't matter what specialization you are. We had an rogue in dragon soul who hates subtelty so he played assassination he still pulled good numbers. Bascially PLAY THE SPEC YOU ARE BEST AT!

On the topic of gear, if you have 4 piece tier 16 you can play any spec and compete. I have a mastery/haste heavy build but since the tier has so much crit I can play fire and still compete with everyone else in my raid. Gear is not as big a factor in which specialization you should be playing. If you suck balls at fire your going to do more damage in a crit based arcane or a crit based frost build.

well... 4p t16 is utter rubbish for frost and im sure 90% of frost mages would see a noticable increase in damage if they stopped using it and used wf or hwf offpieces.

- - - Updated - - -

The median doesn't prove anything, the mean doesn't prove anything. But of those two values (when you've not a normal distribution) the mean is the most wrong one (you learn this the first day on a normal statistics course when you learn about moments) and also the most popular and used one by people without basic math knowledge.

You want to compare potential of the spec on malkorok (according to you the best fight to do so). Then let's see top100 parses, shall we?

But well, if you want to select the samples so the result meets your desires, be my guest. I don't want to hurt your ego.

Apart from this nonsense topic, the answer to this thread to the original author is: go frost with your current gear.

But that isnt showing the potential output of the spec because there is unavoidable padding on malkorok (particularly 25h). Every mage spec has cleave that is passive due to rotation. That is like using klaxxi as your example.

Also, you havent eliminated any mage who received tricks or any dodgy log file. Youve literally just taken their word and assumed that the top 100 parses must all be legit. We are so late in the tier that people are trying for ranks with stupid things like double lusting, tricks etc.

raidbots has one good feature, and that is where it tells you how many people used x cooldown or healthstones or potions in your raid. Everything else about it is totally rubbish

[Vedel]

well... 4p t16 is utter rubbish for frost and im sure 90% of frost mages would see a noticable increase in damage if they stopped using it and used wf or hwf offpieces.

Yes that is true that 4 piece for frost is rubbish(woo 800k damage on a 6 minute fight). I was talking more about being able to play fire. You can play fire competitively without having all crit non-tier gear if you have the 4 piece bonus.

[thesmuggler]

These threads are becoming so tedious. Just try out the specs you like in a couple flex runs. The reforging and regemming cost will be well worth it. Log yourself, and compare how you did. If you're performing about the same, just choose whichever one you found more enjoyable. If you're pulling better numbers in a certain spec, run with it.

Edit: Just saw Vedel's first post. Pretty much what he said.