576 ilvl - wondering Arcane / Frost

[Fatmuff]

Currently progressing on heroic thok. i Just swapped to frost for last nights raid, i would post logs but i forgot to summon pet a few times (jeez yea i know) just used to arcane.
Anyways i just wanted a second pair of eyes, with current gear i wanted to see what you all think which would preform better in Heroic SoO.

currently frost atm like i said 46% haste raid buffed - a little under the 26% crit and tons of msatery
as arcane i was sitting at around 99% mastery and i think 26%? haste i cant quite remember.


cannot link my armory yet - if someone would that would help a ton

Overkill - US Illidan

[ArchitechSK]

Honestly, at this level, imo, the best spec is the one you have the most practice on (which would be arcane). For me, the 50-100 or so pulls to down thok is just really enough to start feeling confident on a new spec

[Huevos]

I agree with Architech, play what you feel comfortable with. Arcane is pretty strong on that fight since you can camp stacks for so long using CoC/AE during the screeches. Also probably the best spec for the bats, though frost will be very good too with an orb up, and if you have a few other strong AoE classes you could probably just spam IL on the boss there. You'll be more mobile for sure as frost in phase 2, but you can turret pretty well if your raid is good about positioning and you don't get fixated.

[Fatmuff]

thanks for the reply's, i am more comfortable with arcane as ive been playing it longer.. my burst is higher forsure but i just cant help but notice some downtime with little or no dps (not just thok but other fights). as frost i have steady dps thats been on par and sometimes higher than i was as arcane could just be not being stationary but no fights in SoO heroic let you stand still. still not sure what spec ill start out as, also i was wondering if anyone here is frost or has tired both at a high enough gear level to give me some insight on how well frost has preformed vs arcane. i think arcane is higher but you never know.

also my raid group is 10man we have 3 melee a hunter and sp with 2 pallys ret / prot for bop's so thok should'nt go to bad. i was more curious on just a Heroic SoO in general at my lvl if frost would out preform arcane. ive played mage for years now so it wouldnt be a skill issue just curious if arcane > frost 570+ or if frost with alot of mastery / haste gear (to hit the 14,242 haste BP) while having a nice amount of mastery. would beat arcane with loads of mastery and around 20%ish haste (could swap gems and reach higher bp's aswell as arcane)

[Daewyn]

The fact that you actually have almost better gear than I do makes me not want to help you

Both frost and arcane have their strengths and it's not easy to say which one is stronger especially during progress. Arcane gets better as fights get shorter for sure and is generally better on multi target, but is also more dependable on opening burst and being able to stand still. Almost every encounter arcane has higher potential and if you are more confortable with it, I don't really see a reason for you to change. Frost still offers a few things I like (control, mobility, a decent 1 minute cd) and if you personally feel that you want to change or your tactics require some of those utilities I mentioned, it really isn't a bad choice.

I personally played whole progress as arcane (minus Thok and Siegecrafter, where I played fire) but situation was a bit different back then for numerous reasons which I'm not going to discuss very deeply here but for example T15 4 set was still amazing and I had never seriously raided as frost + new changes to mastery made me a bit unsure how the spec will perform.

Just a few words from someone who has played both on decent level, take them as you will

[Pyromelter]

The thing with arcane is that your raid has to account for you strategy-wise (due to severe movement penalties), whereas with frost and fire you can just be a normal ranged.

Thok, Siegecrafter, and Garrosh put particular demands on ranged dps that are tough for arcane to handle. I would make the argument that you'd be better off completely committing to fire for the final 4 heroics, assuming you'd be on assembly line duty and siegeworker duty on garrosh.

Frost may be better on thok due to better movement dps and more dps on the run, plus it still has good aoe burst, but arcane does pretty well on thok at certain points as well.

My opinion is that fire has a large enough dps ceiling over both frost and arcane that fire would be your best bet. I would say if you are considering switching from arcane to frost, that's probably not worth it - raidbots 14day moving average on thok (all parses) 10H is in a statistical dead heat between frost and arcane, with fire being 7.85% higher than arcane.

So in short, if you are going to change specs, change to fire, don't change from arcane to frost. (Unless of course you'll need frost for siegecrafter heroic).

[Fatmuff]

hah, well atlest you helped me, im very confident in my numbers as arcane. havent played frost in a LONG time so i figured id ask around. thanks tho! i will keep what you said in mind.

[Henzington]

The only fight in which arcane is going to be not doable is if you go on the belt for siegecrafter otherwise you should be fine.

[voltaa]

Just a few words from someone who has played both on decent level, take them as you will

Well that's being a little modest.

I switched to frost for my first night on thok and played frost for my first siege kill. Both times I kicked myself fir it knowing I would have done better as the spec I know better, rather than trying to cater to what I thought was better. If you play arcane really well, play arcane, it's great for every fight in the instance regardless of what some people will say about it not being as good or viable for the last wing.

@henz, IW Arcane with a priest to levitate you can do decent on the belt, but again that's a case of your raid having to cater to you to do something as arcane.

[Hasted]

They're both fairly playable on Thok depending on your Haste levels. Arcane will leave you feeling useless at times if your guild likes to take stacks high. If you can position yourself in melee and bats need work Arcane outperforms Frost in AoE on this fight. Outside of those two concerns both perform equally in playability, so it comes down to which you personally can pull better numbers on.

[Henzington]

I tried to dealing with levitate and the timing with death from above could be just terrible so I just went fire and was fine since I had an offspec gear. I try to get off spec gear every tier just in case blizzard decides to nerf or buff one spec or another mid tier /cough t14 and t12 /cough. Its the same reason I got 4p this tier even though I was still using the last tier till they finally nerfed it.

[Mastamage]

Frost stats I suggest trying if you're spec switching: 13163 haste (this will get you an extra tick on NT and LB), or 14242(?) (should be the GCD w/ Frost Armor and raid haste). If you're good at Arcane, stay Arcane. If you want more movement and can play Frost optimally then stay Frost. Your other option is to run a Haste stacked Frost build and go from there. It won't be as optimal as a Mastery build on Thok but will help with the faster casts and movement and will help you get away from RoP.

Try them both out. Run different breakpoint builds as Frost.

[Delath]

They're both fairly playable on Thok depending on your Haste levels. Arcane will leave you feeling useless at times if your guild likes to take stacks high. If you can position yourself in melee and bats need work Arcane outperforms Frost in AoE on this fight. Outside of those two concerns both perform equally in playability, so it comes down to which you personally can pull better numbers on.

I found that Arcane is quite playable on Thok with the standard 9762 breakpoint and frost armor since you will be able to fit an AB or AM in the cast window also at high stacks (this is 25man so we go very high stacks). It only gets a little choppy when the window is a little longer than the cast and leaves a stupid gap.

On 25man Siege I'm able to do platform with an emphasis on dealing with mines pretty effectively as arcane so far on progress, dunno how well it works on 10man (24% best, duh).

[HhitSappens]

Going high stacks does not matter, the time inbetween 2 aoe shouts is 2.4s after the 6th stack and it says 2.4s for the whole rest of p1.
And 6 stacks isn't considered that much...