What spec is the best atm?

[Polarthief]

Fire - low single target, low* AoE, insane* cleave

Fix't that for you.

"AoE" typically means hitting a large amount of targets over a short period of time, which Fire is lackluster at (since it only extends to 6 targets per IB), while cleave refers to non-vital secondary targets over a lengthy period of time, such as Twin Ogrons, Tectus, etc. Fire is pretty much terrible at everything except for cleave, especially pre-Mythic gear (and even with full BiS from BRF, it'll still be a bit behind Frost/Arcane!)

Also as far as Arcane and Frost, Frost not only is all around good at everything, but is arguably the most mobile. Fire is obviously more mobile due to Scorch (and its movement speed increase), but a string of unlucky crits (none of which proc Pyrotechnics) and Scorch spamming is weaker than Ice Lance spamming, while you can bank up to 4 procs and 2 INs for mobility (not that you'd need that much anyways). Arcane, while it has insane ST, it's balanced around having nothing to do on the move except Arcane Barrage, which also resets your charges and can be a significant DPS loss if used improperly.

[Xires]

How big of a diffrence between the 3 specs are there overall?

Like

Fire: 40k dps
Frost: 35k dps
Arcane: 38k dps

or so ?

Fire is by far the weakest spec right now. NOBODY plays it to raid. No serious raider does anyway. If you are looking to raid then you need to go frost or Arcane. Right now both are very strong. The only fight fire can come ahead of either spec right now is tectus and you need a different set of gear to play fire so it isn't worth it.
Fire will start to shine in BFR mythic gear though.

- - - Updated - - -

Here's the perspective you are always going to hear that overall single target damage goes from:

Arcane > Frost > Fire

Movement heavy fights favor Frost over Arcane and cleave/AoE fights will favor Fire.

The only issue is realistically every spec is available for play regardless of sims and what people think HOWEVER the biggest factor amongst these specs and what is the "best" realistically breaks down into gear. With Highmaul gear there is a lot of multistrike available and Frost is generally the more "easier" spec to play so people tend to do better with that. With more gear, Arcane/Fire are an option however Arcane is much stronger imo as movement heavy fights don't technically impair Arcane because you can swap to Incanter's Flow and you'll lose a bit of DPS but nothing dramatic enough to declare Frost a stronger spec. The only issue with being Arcane that is if you choose to go Arcane that means swap all your enchants to mastery ones, so it's a 15k-ish gold commitment and playing Frost as your offspec with mastery enchants is a big no-no since mastery is garbage for frost. But you can do it vice versa, if you like Frost and would like to play Arcane on fights such as Butcher then go Frost with multistrike enchants and have Arcane be your offspec, you'll only run into issues where you'll probably want to play Fire for tectus and crit is your best stat but swapping gear/trinkets would work for this since you'll only really play fire here unless you have great gear for it (Mythic) in anticipation of BRF.

So overall all specs are playable, Frost is better at lower levels and into low Mythic but as you get more geared Arcane becomes stronger and when you become more optimized, Fire is do-able on any fight that is 2+ targets in Mythic. I would start out as Frost and move to an Arcane/Fire build at 672+ ilevel or remain Frost if you can play it better/have better stats for it.

How is fire any harder? Arcane is annoying. I don't like it anymore so I don't play it. It isn't hard- the playstyle just sucks and I don't like RoP and arcane is still tied to RoP on almost every encounter. Fire you are just spamming fireball fillers until you get a hotstreak and when it's off CD and you have a heating up proc you hit inferno blast for another heating up proc and then rinse and repeat. None of the specs are hard. Fire is easy, Frost is easy, and arcane is annoying.

[aLCuiN]

NOBODY plays it to raid. If you are looking to raid then you need to go frost or Arcane. Right now both are very strong. The only fight fire can come ahead of either spec right now is tectus and you need a different set of gear to play fire so it isn't worth it.
Fire will start to shine in BFR mythic gear though.

Actually if you playing arcane (so if you have mastery) you can easly switch fire for tectus and twin. Yes, in hm a lot of ms gear but 5+ hc gear piece or more arcane is better than frost. for tectus and twin mastery is impotant for fire too. By the way this is my choise cause i hate frost. Easy stupit rotation and idiot w.elemtal

[Deleted]

Fire is by far the weakest spec right now. NOBODY plays it to raid. No serious raider does anyway. If you are looking to raid then you need to go frost or Arcane. Right now both are very strong. The only fight fire can come ahead of either spec right now is tectus and you need a different set of gear to play fire so it isn't worth it.
Fire will start to shine in BFR mythic gear though.

That depends what you would consider a serious raider.. There is quite a few people playing fire, i for one have been playing fire all the way to Mythic Butcher (where for obvious reasons i have gone arcane), still having Fire as my spec nr 2. it is definately a very viable spec and with the right RNG (and permission to scumbag huehue) can top the meters for most fights in this tier.

If you are not going for top 200 world or something it is definately viable to play whichever spec you prefer.

[Lobstarrr]

If you are not going for top 200 world or something it is definately viable to play whichever spec you prefer.

If you prefer not being dead last on dps you will not play fire even in heroic.

When you say you do fine on damage that only means your fellow raiders are not up to par.

[Deleted]

Well, I for one plays the specc I find most fun (supercasual player nowadays, 2/7HC in pugs), and that is fire, have been almost for 10 years except for Arcane for second half of Wrath, and fire is not that bad people say it is, I'm sitting at 39% crit with self buffed intellect and around 20% mastery at 654 ilvl and doing around 23-24k on single-target and with BRF gear you will blow people out the water, though we will get nerfed probably.

[Deleted]

If you prefer not being dead last on dps you will not play fire even in heroic.

When you say you do fine on damage that only means your fellow raiders are not up to par.

The only fight Fire should be coming in dead last on in Highmaul is Butcher. It's fine on every other fight.

[aLCuiN]

The only fight Fire should be coming in dead last on in Highmaul is Butcher. It's fine on every other fight.

Excatly right. We didnt kill yet m butcher but our second mage is playing fire and he used UM/MI/PC %44cc/%30~master with raid buff. He doin 30k. I think pretty good dps and im doing 35k+. but he doin 45k+ on tectus im doing as fire 40k~

[Nohara]

I switched to Fire (ilvl 664), with just normal and hc versions of Highmaul gear. In other words, lots of Multistrike, not much Crit. The annoying thing is that it is quiet expensive to simply change specs. Rare gems are worth 1500-2000g on my realm (I have 4 gemslots), neck/cloak/ring enchants are also at 1k, weapon near 4k. Now, I'm self sufficient, but it is worth a total 15-16k not ending up in my pocket. if you want decent specs, and for Fire you will need all the Crit you can find.

I've played Fire for the last 2 expacs (well, with a few Arcane months), mostly playing HC mode, so I know this class in and out. I generate less DPS in any singletarget fight, with any talent setup (compaired to Frost). The problem is the gear not having a lot Crit, which will improve a lot with 6.1. Another issue is Scorch, it does to low damage. Fire scales awesomely during a expac, the spec gets exponentional better with each ilvl, but at low ilvl, it's an whole other story. Scorch should have decent damage at the beginning of an expac, so it is at least an option to use. With low Haste, Fireball can (with low haste) be interupted a lot using small movements. The ideal Fire solution 'when you need to move' used to be Scorch. It now just plumits your DPS. Icy Flows isnt enough at high movement fights, so you will end up using Scorch, which sucks. 6.1 fixes some of the issues, giving us much more Crit, and may aswell solve the 'what to cast when walking, as more Crit will result in more insta casts.

I changed to Fire because Frost was getting to weak. Our Arcane Mage with much lower gear is often able to keep up with me, but since I truely hate Arcane, and Fire gets the highest realistic sims, I chose Fire. Today, a mistake, perhaps when 6.1 hits, a very good choice.

I aint changing it though, I got a decent ammount of cash, I rather play Frost with Crit gems and Enchants, then 'spend' another 15k..

[Deleted]

If you prefer not being dead last on dps you will not play fire even in heroic.

When you say you do fine on damage that only means your fellow raiders are not up to par.

If you are last as fire on any encounter you need to learn to play. Or get better gear. One of the two, no exceptions.