Mage Nerf

[reflection]

Thank god they didn't smash Frost to the ground. I love being Frost as it is not that RNG dependent and I always feel I have more control. The problem later on will be that your haste will be above 100% a lot of times. Currently I have 42% haste full raid buffed. If there's a haste trinket proccing (or the legendary meta) and you have Bloodlust I am easily above 100% which obviously sucks. Currently I'm also gemmed full haste, so I could move some haste to int.

Anyway I will give Fire another try, especially because I recently got 4p T15 and the bonus for Fire is really nice. This should flatten out the RNG randomness a little bit more.

[Argussonn]

I tried fire few times, last one was with 523 ilvl and 39% crit and I hate it. I do realize that my skills are not top shelf, but as frost I do way more dps, except those 2 times a night when I get crazy rng with fire.

[Akraen]

Hi I'm frost and I beat fire mages.

[Argussonn]

Hi I'm frost and I beat fire mages.

You're the boss here
My hero

[Mastamage]

Hi I'm frost and I beat fire mages.

Ditto, my friend. Ditto. Since we've found the value of mastery and the fact that our heavy haste build allows for our meta to proc upwards of 50% I haven't even thought twice about about Fire. It's cute they can stack one stat and be done. I always find myself beating them though.

Kudos to everyone who helped make frost more competitive. I did some work on the 5.2 ptr but I've since slowed down. I'm glad others have brought this class to another level.

[Libretto]

http://www.worldoflogs.com/rankings/...5H/Frost_Mage/
http://www.worldoflogs.com/rankings/...25H/Fire_Mage/

Fairly good fight for comparison purposes since it's short and has relatively few mechanics of importance. note how the #1 frost parse wouldn't even make the first page of fire. (mine is the #3 frost parse)

Try other bosses such as durumu, ji-kun, council etc for even larger divides. It's also not an asian ilevel thing as the divide is the same when narrowing to US/EU ranks.

While frost has its strengths, it will not be competitive next tier if left the same. You'll be going into next tier's raid with around 50% crit as fire - that is -more- than mages had in dragon soul where fire was also dominant.

Buffing frostbolt is not the answer, but PVE frost definitely needs its scaling improved.

I am happy that there are those of us who play frost who can mop the floor with bad fire mages in our guild or in LFR or whatever, but the fact of the matter is that at gear levels above 530 or so fire begins to outscale frost drastically.

[brirrspliff]

Hi I'm frost and I beat fire mages with bad gear.

Hi I'm frost and I beat fire mages who can't play.

sorry, but there's nothing in between. but if it works for you, fine! :-)

---------- Post added 2013-05-08 at 08:27 PM ----------

Ditto, my friend. Ditto. Since we've found the value of mastery and the fact that our heavy haste build allows for our meta to proc upwards of 50% I haven't even thought twice about about Fire. It's cute they can stack one stat and be done. I always find myself beating them though.

Kudos to everyone who helped make frost more competitive. I did some work on the 5.2 ptr but I've since slowed down. I'm glad others have brought this class to another level.

i have no words for this. oh, maybe i have: superiority complex much? oh and btw, thanks for making frost so good. what's your position within blizzard, again? :-)

[Leviatron]

Fairly good fight for comparison purposes since it's short and has relatively few mechanics of importance. note how the #1 frost parse wouldn't even make the first page of fire. (mine is the #3 frost parse)

Try other bosses such as durumu, ji-kun, council etc for even larger divides. It's also not an asian ilevel thing as the divide is the same when narrowing to US/EU ranks.

If you make it just US/EU the gap is much smaller. #1 Fire 294662 compared to #1 Frost 276361. H Council and H Ji-kun depending on strategies and the rest of the group's performance (not just dps) things can be done slightly different. Even then the H Ji-Kun dps isn't that big of a difference. Scaling is an issue yes, but on a single target fight it is clear there isn't that much of a difference. Also H Durumu has very few frost mage parses. I know are some hardcore frost mages, but fire still has the advantage with combustion cleave.

I have no words for this. oh, maybe i have: superiority complex much? oh and btw, thanks for making frost so good. what's your position within blizzard, again? :-)

Only superiority complex I see is yours here so far.

[pyrostorm9001]

http://www.worldoflogs.com/rankings/...5H/Frost_Mage/
http://www.worldoflogs.com/rankings/...25H/Fire_Mage/

Fairly good fight for comparison purposes since it's short and has relatively few mechanics of importance. note how the #1 frost parse wouldn't even make the first page of fire. (mine is the #3 frost parse)

Try other bosses such as durumu, ji-kun, council etc for even larger divides. It's also not an asian ilevel thing as the divide is the same when narrowing to US/EU ranks.

Wait hang on, not sure if you are reading in WoL what im reading but thats EXACTLY whats happening. When bringing it to US/EU realms only Frosts no.1 dps rank is 276361 Fires no.1 dps rank is 294662 That is quite close. especially when you take into consideration damage done.

[Akraen]

Oh I know we won't scale as well.

However, meta gem, mastery (which I said months and months ago would become good), and good play will help mitigate it though.

Doubt I'll ever beat a Fire #1 parse. But I bet I'll always fall within the top 100 fire mages if you plug my frost dps into their rankings. You don't see more than 75-80 frost mages do well because they're not snapshotting NT correctly or using Alter Time optimally. I don't know much about fire, but either there are just better fire mages, or it isn't as costly if you screw up snapshots/AT.

I also play arcane, when I am tired of jabbing forks in my eyes and decide I'd like a more painful torture. The numbers are there and it's playable, and I truly think Arcane will yield higher numbers than both frost or fire by the end of next tier. However it has got to be the most irritating spec in this game to play. You just have to stand still or get the raid to cater to you if you want to beat frost or fire output.

[Drakainen]

FFB being affected by the frostbolt debuff would be terrible. FFB is the only spell we can use against a target without ramp-up.

Its extremely hard to buff frost without causing all sorts of pvp problems. In 522 gear it seems just fine from my experience but that could change in heroic gear according to people here on the forums.

It would be nice however if FFB could at least refresh the Frostbolt debuff, doesn't even have to add a stack, just refresh what ya have.

[Libretto]

Wait hang on, not sure if you are reading in WoL what im reading but thats EXACTLY whats happening. When bringing it to US/EU realms only Frosts no.1 dps rank is 276361 Fires no.1 dps rank is 294662 That is quite close. especially when you take into consideration damage done.

Um... I suppose you should spend more than 5 seconds looking at the rankings before commenting.

If you narrow it to US/EU realms, the #1 parse doesn't have much difference, no. However, my parse, which is #2, does not even make page 1 of fire. It drops off pretty rapidly from there.

Please make the effort to analyze the data more thoroughly before commenting again.

[Deleted]

Ah well, you´re talking about my ranks. I´ve managed to rank 4x times #1 25m heroic, but those ranks are a joke compared to top fire parses. Our former logs were private, but the difference between 529 and 534 (Jin rok was 3 weeks ago with ~ilvl 529) is not even there. Frost is pretty much meta gem and rppm trinkets. An ilvl 525 frost mage with a pretty huge trinket uptime (luck/RNG), can simply beat another one with 10 ilvl more. Frost scaling is just worse.

@ Akraen

I have beaten my fellow fire mages on every heroic first kill (had to play fire on council and twins), but with every item we loot, the gap (advantage for fire) become bigger. The thing is, the majority of the very small but fine frost mage community is happy with the meta gem right now, high uptime, lots of haste, a lot of proccs and so on. But if they reach ilvl 530 - 535, they will realize, that the party is soon over (that is what I get at the moment).

I´m pretty well geared, but as soon 5.3 hits live, most of my gear is worthless, because fire will dominate the charts and a lot of crit gear is needed. Really wish they give us a fix or an option to stay competitive. Was really fun to hardcore progress as frost.

[Libretto]

I could probably squeeze 15-20k more out on jinrokh if I cold snap iceblocked ionization, but our raid lead had DKs blow the raid up enough with AMS to disallow cheezing it. :[

I tended to beat our fire mages on every progression kill too, outside durumu where I specced fire because it was blatantly better. Don't think frost will be viable for lei shen either.

Still would barely make page 1 fire.

[Akraen]

...
@ Akraen

I have beaten my fellow fire mages on every heroic first kill (had to play fire on council and twins), but with every item we loot, the gap (advantage for fire) become bigger. The thing is, the majority of the very small but fine frost mage community is happy with the meta gem right now, high uptime, lots of haste, a lot of proccs and so on. But if they reach ilvl 530 - 535, they will realize, that the party is soon over (that is what I get at the moment).

I´m pretty well geared, but as soon 5.3 hits live, most of my gear is worthless, because fire will dominate the charts and a lot of crit gear is needed. Really wish they give us a fix or an option to stay competitive. Was really fun to hardcore progress as frost.

Yeah I honestly am not qualified to comment on that. I know I'm very well geared compared to a lot of people, and have a 541 weapon, but I'm still only 524.

I don't like to hear what I'm hearing, but I still don't think the difference is enough to force a respec as in DS.

[Malfecto]

I don't think Jin'rokh is a fair comparison since ignite and combustion compound damage boosts like the pools more so than anything in frost.

At any rate, using top parses as justification is an incomplete picture, for either side, but even more so for fire when you haven't honestly represented the flip side of the rng coin; that impacts fire more so than frost. If you insist on using them though, I think this tells a better story:

http://www.worldoflogs.com/rankings/...5H/Frost_Mage/

http://www.worldoflogs.com/rankings/...25H/Fire_Mage/

As for the scaling issue, I'll say it again, I think if set bonuses focus more on frosts IL and FFB procs in T15, it won't be that hard to keep up without mangling how stats scale. This should be obvious from how strong 2 pc T14 was for frost. Mastery is underrated, tbh, for frost.

[jtmzac]

Frost is pretty much meta gem and rppm trinkets. An ilvl 525 frost mage with a pretty huge trinket uptime (luck/RNG), can simply beat another one with 10 ilvl more. Frost scaling is just worse.

I've noticed this and its been bugging me. I play frost for relatively similar dps but the rng swing now is getting quite large.

I had a great night the other day and played the best I have in months yet failed to beat my previous records on most fights just because of bad rng. The differences weren't that small either. I was a good 8-10% behind on some fights compared to my personal bests.

I had initially dismissed it as just the other people on the team getting much better at fights but I'm starting to notice the scaling issues at around normal ilvl's. Very quickly our rogue has overtaken me at single target dps and our boomy has made huge gains with the meta and more gear.

As for all the talk about fire getting too far ahead I'm sure we'll just see another nerf at some point if it really gets that bad.

[Zavri]

Not a big fan of the current fire spec, been doing arcane and the numbers are there, just takes alot more effort. But at least the rng on the spec is low.

[Ryoushi]

In proper gear fire isn't all that rng. I usually end up chaining fireball + pyro, barely ever have only heating up with inferno blast on cd. The biggest rng i get right now is the meta not proccing at start, or not lining up with any combustion after the first. When you have 50%+ crit there's no real rng.

[Libretto]

resented the flip side of the rng coin; that impacts fire more so than frost. If you insist on using them though, I think this tells a better story:

Dunno what megaera H 25 logs will represent.

Fire is an abysmal spec at switching to short-lived adds, but yet the fire parses still have a higher range than the frost ones.

In addition, one of the top fire parses is from someone who creatively went frost bomb to deal with adds on top of impacting pyroblast dot / combustion, ending up doing 60M damage to them while still being competitive on a couple of the heads. The fire mage did almost double the damage with frost bomb to adds as the frost mage in the same parse did, primarily because the frost mage appears to have forgotten what "pet nova" and "shatter" were.