[Fire] Fire better than frost in terms of dps?

[Polarthief]

noxxic = arcane > frost > fire

Noxxic also says it's recommended to use the Arcane Explosion glyph as ALL THREE SPECCS, says the Combustion glyph is "Optional" and not "Recommended", and for Frost, it fails to mention the Water Elemental glyph. It also says to pick up NT for Frost, which is just flat out wrong unless you're using LOTC.

Noxxic is the new AskMrRobot: You don't use it. (On a brighter note, AskMrRobot has been working much better recently, though some items should be taken with a grain of salt. If you're smart, it's a great tool to get a quick list of item upgrades)

OT: OP, it's more or less a gear thing. Fire scales amazingly well with gear, and we'll be seeing a LOT more Mages play Fire in 5.2/ToT as a result. Frost doesn't scale nearly as well and is definitely the least gear dependent (so far). I'd probably say based on your gear, Fire would pull ahead.

In terms of specific fights, Frost is by far the best at mobility with Fire not too far behind. I'd say try it. Just don't get too discouraged if you see lower numbers right away. Fire is a heavily RNG based specc, and it's highs and lows vary greatly based on it. Overall though, you'll probably see an increase.


PS: Something to keep in mind: Your 4P is near useless assuming you're doing PoM/Alter Time Combustions, allowing you to drop those Hit/Mastery shoulders and your Haste/Mastery pants (or Crit Mastery helm) for better choices, such as the Haste/Crit shoulders from Gara'jal or the Haste/Hit pants from Sha of Fear. There's also a Hit/Crit helm if you get lucky from Galleon, or a Haste/Hit helm from Will.

[Fennixx]

Maybe I'm crazy but it seems no one agrees about best method to compare specs. Simc ? "Its a machine, not a human being playing. It is not real world!". Raid bots results? "Worthless cuz few people play underperforming specs" and "there is no data". My guild logs? "Dude , your guild sucks and so do you. Dont compare specs based on your own results". Can anyone enlight me or am I nuts?

Ot : frost is viable if you like holding your team back. Atm, cleave ? Go fire. Anything else ? Arcane

[Polarthief]

Ot : frost is viable if you like holding your team back. Atm, cleave ? Go fire. Anything else ? Arcane

Frost doesn't hold your team back unless you're going for hard DPS races and the other DPS aren't that great.

Granted, the same could be said for ANYONE with 2 or 3 DPS speccs playing the 'wrong' one.

[Empath]

It depends on the fight really. I personally go frost for heroic blade lord because as arcane my stacks always fall off cause of unseen strike. I also find myself having to move a lot during the fight, making arcane annoying. idk maybe i'm just bad at that but I end up getting top damage as frost. lol

Edit: This was in response to the whole "holding your team back" thing.

[Reforge]

It depends on the fight really. I personally go frost for heroic blade lord because as arcane my stacks always fall off cause of unseen strike. I also find myself having to move a lot during the fight, making arcane annoying. idk maybe i'm just bad at that but I end up getting top damage as frost. lol

Edit: This was in response to the whole "holding your team back" thing.

In order to keep your stacks from falling because of unseen strike, you need to Arcane Explosion as you are hit by it. that will refresh your charges and you will be GG.

[Deleted]

Maybe I'm crazy but it seems no one agrees about best method to compare specs. Simc ? "Its a machine, not a human being playing. It is not real world!". Raid bots results? "Worthless cuz few people play underperforming specs" and "there is no data". My guild logs? "Dude , your guild sucks and so do you. Dont compare specs based on your own results". Can anyone enlight me or am I nuts?

Ot : frost is viable if you like holding your team back. Atm, cleave ? Go fire. Anything else ? Arcane

One more claming that there aint enough data.
okay lets say there is 200.000 players that plays mage a main char(out of the 9.6 mio that play. low because some dont really play and some not at max lvl and so on).
100.000 of those only plays pvp, allrite 100.000 left that play pve or both pve and pvp.
when it comes to pve only 5% play frost so we are down to 5000 frost mages.
out of those 5000 mages only 5% have the gear and skill to preform really well and show what the spec can do, so we are down to 250 mages
again only have of the raids get on log so we are down to 125 frost mage whit gear and skill
why is it that the top 100 frost mage logs count for nothing then when the mage place at place 101 on logs aint apart of the data for the top 100 dps for frost.
if there where 75 frost mages only 25 of em have to take down the boss twice whit good trys to get a top 100.
and im pretty damn sure that there is more then 125 frost mages out there that can play and have gear.

[Deleted]

Of all the mage who pve atm, i bet there's not even 1% of those mages that raid heroics as frost.

Most of the frost mage are raiding normals or raiding as casual just for fun. Now, thats not a bad thing, and thats not suppose to support which spec is better, i'm just saying you clearly have not enough data to make any assessment about this spec.

That being said, it'll all change with 5.2, so there's not point in arguing over this.. !

[Deleted]

Of all the mage who pve atm, i bet there's not even 1% of those mages that raid heroics as frost.

Most of the frost mage are raiding normals or raiding as casual just for fun. Now, thats not a bad thing, and thats not suppose to support which spec is better, i'm just saying you clearly have not enough data to make any assessment about this spec.

That being said, it'll all change with 5.2, so there's not point in arguing over this.. !

True - and here is one of them: a frostmage playing hc (even if not all of them, some normal). Changed from fire to frost after fire nerf last year. Might change again soon - just love fire too much

[Deleted]

Frost is ALWAYS gonna stay on a poor condition no matter what you guys say, and what raidbots and sims you run. There is 1 SIMPLE answer to it - PVP. Frost for Heroic Progression is just pathetic.... so many buttons, so many stuff, and not even close to Arcane/Fire, in a real raid-situation you'll realize it. Stop trusting those stupid bots and sims they don't mean nothing in a raid environment. It's not a training dummy after all, we are talking about raids.

Frost is doomed to be pvp spec. It's only viable for dungeons or if you don't have huge requirements and don't want to 100% be top dps or near the top. OR if you need AoE.

[Polarthief]

Frost is ALWAYS gonna stay on a poor condition no matter what you guys say, and what raidbots and sims you run. There is 1 SIMPLE answer to it - PVP. Frost for Heroic Progression is just pathetic.... so many buttons, so many stuff, and not even close to Arcane/Fire, in a real raid-situation you'll realize it. Stop trusting those stupid bots and sims they don't mean nothing in a raid environment. It's not a training dummy after all, we are talking about raids.

Frost is doomed to be pvp spec. It's only viable for dungeons or if you don't have huge requirements and don't want to 100% be top dps or near the top. OR if you need AoE.

Which is why they could just buff Frostbolt's scaling further and change our Mastery in some way to not make it broken in PvP.

If they put some effort into it, Frost could easily become competitive. Saying it's "doomed to be a PvP specc" is the lazy man's excuse for not putting time and care into it like they did with Arcane and Warlocks.

[Akraen]

People giving you the misinformation that you'd see a DPS increase by going fire have no business offering mage advice.

On Vizier, you'll have less trouble by avoiding frost. We have a lot of pet management problems, but you can simply glyph it to cut down on its stupidity. Frost is tougher to recover and you are required to not forget to renew your frostbolt debuff on transitions-- little things like having a warlock port go a long way to help cut back on those DPS losses.

That said, arcane will parse higher nearly each attempt, but attenuation is a pain for rune of power.

I don't run into many fire mages that can compete with my frost dps unless they get very streaky luck-- those are the ones you see ranking on WoL.

Play whichever you are best at because your playstyle will yield the best numbers and all three specs are viable for heroic progression. Arcane DPS is too high, that among other things is being addressed next patch.

[Polarthief]

People giving you the misinformation that you'd see a DPS increase by going fire have no business offering mage advice.

On Vizier, you'll have less trouble by avoiding frost. We have a lot of pet management problems, but you can simply glyph it to cut down on its stupidity. Frost is tougher to recover and you are required to not forget to renew your frostbolt debuff on transitions-- little things like having a warlock port go a long way to help cut back on those DPS losses.

That said, arcane will parse higher nearly each attempt, but attenuation is a pain for rune of power.

I don't run into many fire mages that can compete with my frost dps unless they get very streaky luck-- those are the ones you see ranking on WoL.

Play whichever you are best at because your playstyle will yield the best numbers and all three specs are viable for heroic progression. Arcane DPS is too high, that among other things is being addressed next patch.

Their gear is really high up, so Fire could be a better choice if they're struggling with Frost (which is, overall, the hardest specc to play correctly out of the three).

Arcane may parse higher, but this thread is asking purely about Fire and Frost, so that's pointless to talk about.

Not just streak luck, but higher gear. The people progressing in heroics are almost all Arcane because it's so far ahead. Those without as much progression may choose Fire/Frost, but overall the top Mages are going Arcane. That being said, I still stand by my statement that Fire would be better for anyone (only when compared to Frost; not Arcane) if:

- Your gear level is quite high (500+)
- Frost is too difficult to manage
- There is cleave damage opportunities (Frost has good cleave and amazing AoE, but Fire is a better cleave)
*- You're a typically lucky person (lol not really a point, but I figured I'd humor you all)

[daydayhyphy]

Noxxic also says it's recommended to use the Arcane Explosion glyph as ALL THREE SPECCS, says the Combustion glyph is "Optional" and not "Recommended", and for Frost, it fails to mention the Water Elemental glyph. It also says to pick up NT for Frost, which is just flat out wrong unless you're using LOTC.

Noxxic is the new AskMrRobot: You don't use it. (On a brighter note, AskMrRobot has been working much better recently, though some items should be taken with a grain of salt. If you're smart, it's a great tool to get a quick list of item upgrades)

OT: OP, it's more or less a gear thing. Fire scales amazingly well with gear, and we'll be seeing a LOT more Mages play Fire in 5.2/ToT as a result. Frost doesn't scale nearly as well and is definitely the least gear dependent (so far). I'd probably say based on your gear, Fire would pull ahead.

In terms of specific fights, Frost is by far the best at mobility with Fire not too far behind. I'd say try it. Just don't get too discouraged if you see lower numbers right away. Fire is a heavily RNG based specc, and it's highs and lows vary greatly based on it. Overall though, you'll probably see an increase.


PS: Something to keep in mind: Your 4P is near useless assuming you're doing PoM/Alter Time Combustions, allowing you to drop those Hit/Mastery shoulders and your Haste/Mastery pants (or Crit Mastery helm) for better choices, such as the Haste/Crit shoulders from Gara'jal or the Haste/Hit pants from Sha of Fear. There's also a Hit/Crit helm if you get lucky from Galleon, or a Haste/Hit helm from Will.

arcane explosion glyph for better aoe. and combustion glyph is 0 dps increase so it's optional. i dont see why you would need water elemental glyph, definitely not needed. nether tempest is the best bomb for frost.

arcane > frost > fire

[Deleted]

arcane explosion glyph for better aoe. and combustion glyph is 0 dps increase so it's optional. i dont see why you would need water elemental glyph, definitely not needed. nether tempest is the best bomb for frost.

arcane > frost > fire

No offense, but i'm starting to wonder if you even know the mage class.

[Deleted]

Their gear is really high up, so Fire could be a better choice if they're struggling with Frost (which is, overall, the hardest specc to play correctly out of the three).

Arcane may parse higher, but this thread is asking purely about Fire and Frost, so that's pointless to talk about.

Not just streak luck, but higher gear. The people progressing in heroics are almost all Arcane because it's so far ahead. Those without as much progression may choose Fire/Frost, but overall the top Mages are going Arcane. That being said, I still stand by my statement that Fire would be better for anyone (only when compared to Frost; not Arcane) if:

- Your gear level is quite high (500+)
- Frost is too difficult to manage
- There is cleave damage opportunities (Frost has good cleave and amazing AoE, but Fire is a better cleave)
*- You're a typically lucky person (lol not really a point, but I figured I'd humor you all)

Those points are nice and all. But do you remember that Fire still has a crapton of RNG? And while at higher levels you could theoretically outdo Frost this rarely happens because they lack the lucky streaks you need for those WoL rankings. Frost provides much steadier dps.

If you really wanted to do the most dps you would just go arcane. But there is no good reason to pick Fire over Frost at the moment.

[jtmzac]

i dont see why you would need water elemental glyph, definitely not needed. nether tempest is the best bomb for frost.

You use the water elemental glyph on every fight you can unless the glyph of ice lance is better. Blade lord is a fight you should be using the water elemental glpyh and fights like heroic spirit kings and normal lei shei are better without the glyph of ice lance.

Nether tempest is only the best bomb for frost once you get heroic lotc. I'm still using frost bomb because using nt without lotc is a significant dps loss.

[elpadrino293]

No offense, but i'm starting to wonder if you even know the mage class.

let's be honest... we are well passed starting to wonder... it is more like full on disbelief imo.

[Vantheus]

Arcane 117,421 DPS/ Frost 111,118 DPS/ Fire 98,872 DPS.....SimulationCraft numbers in like item level gear....as always, knowledge and comfort of a spec will almost always out DPS the others, min/maxers that can actually perform top sim'd DPS aren't here reading about it. Long story short...play what you know/like

[Deleted]

let's be honest... we are well passed starting to wonder... it is more like full on disbelief imo.

You basically just said what I was thinking

[elpadrino293]

Those points are nice and all. But do you remember that Fire still has a crapton of RNG?

not even in full bis, just ~500 ilvl as recommended above, i have 36.65% crit... or 43.75% on a boss after critical mass before any procs... with my procs up, the crit% can easily break 50%, which is far from a "crapton of RNG".

---------- Post added 2013-02-12 at 01:56 AM ----------

Arcane 117,421 DPS/ Frost 111,118 DPS/ Fire 98,872 DPS.....SimulationCraft numbers in like item level gear....as always, knowledge and comfort of a spec will almost always out DPS the others, min/maxers that can actually perform top sim'd DPS aren't here reading about it. Long story short...play what you know/like

the sims are wrong. there is no other way around it. they are not modeling fire correctly.

Gara'jal the Spiritbinder 25H (04:59) Feb 5, 2013 no tricks of the trade, no going into the spirit realm, no other gimmicks or bullshit... just straight dps for 5min at 137k dps.