Arcane mage now the worst spec in mythic Uldir

[Nitros14]

Pretty cool stuff https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/st.../19#dataset=90

At least we're good on Taloc known difficult fight.

[Alphatorg]

Pretty cool stuff https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/st.../19#dataset=90

At least we're good on Taloc known difficult fight.

Arcane is the go-to spec on Taloc, Mother, Fetid, Zul (aside from that one frost mage you need for utility) and Mythrax. Before Fire's buff it was even a valid choice on G'huun.

Thank you for your intelligent and valuable post.

[Lollis]

Arcane is the go-to spec on Taloc

Um. What?

Taloc is a fire mage fight. He has a cut in HP compared to other bosses and nearly all of Phase 3 is at 30% and below so you can spend more of the fight spamming scorch and pyro than you can with any other boss.

[durrtygoodz]

"waaaa, nobody plays fire, look how weak it is, buff fire, waaaaa"

*fire gets buffed twice*

"waaaa, nobody plays arcane, look how weak it is, buff arcane, waaaaa"

- - - Updated - - -

Um. What?

Taloc is a fire mage fight. He has a cut in HP compared to other bosses and nearly all of Phase 3 is at 30% and below.

Arcane still pumps single target.

[Nathasil]

And yet there are almost 19k parses of Arcane Mages in your link and just short of 22k Frost Dk (best spec)....it seems to me a lot of players like playing their Arcane Mage in this content.

What about Demo locks or MM Hunters or Feral Druids who have less than 10k parses COMBINED? Seems like they suck AND are unpopular. I think Blizzard should focus on unpopular specs first. Just my oppinion.

[Lollis]

snip

The two fire mages on that list have terrible azerite traits compared to the arcane mages which have the best traits available to them.

[Alphatorg]

The two fire mages on that list have terrible azerite traits compared to the arcane mages which have the best traits available to them.

Are you trying to troll? That's a screen of the top 10 parses WORLD, not some random raid. No one has parsed better than those two "losers" with their "terrible azerite traits"-

[MrExcelion]

This instance is weird for parsing in general

Taloc - How many people decide to AFK for you and let you hit the coalesced blood during the RP elevator phase

Mother - What group you get sent in and if they do a semi-zerg strat or not

Zek'voz - How long Silithid Warriors stay alive and if you get MCed at the right time

Vectis - Whether or not you beat the 3rd intermission and general add longevity

Fetid - Arcane is generally on the bottom here since its saving its 90sec DPS cd for the 1st and 3rd set. That is to say, its being delayed for 2 minutes and 30 seconds, and Arcane doesn't have much of an execute to pair with the 50% dmg buff. It's still the best suited dps for this fight. Doing the fight properly revolves around not caring about parsing moreso than usual. Last time I checked, an average of 2.5 Arcane Mages were brought to every Fetid kill

Mythrax - How much you get MCed and how long Visions/add lives for

Ghuun - Ball carrying, P1 padding, constantly running across the room to soak boils and drop Explosive in the right spots


With that aside, speaking more generally, this is the roughest tier in recent memory for mage, but the spec still has viability with the AI buff, Arcane burst on Fetid, and slows on Zul (just not in multiples beyond Fetid). Beyond that though, yeah you're better off with aff locks this tier. Better off with multiple locks on Mythrax and Ghuun if given a choice, but any ranged are fine for those two fights.


Arcanes primary weaknesses are the lack of cleave post Resonance and trait nerfs and mobility (in terms of micromovement, displacement aside). Resonance was over-nerfed imo, and like Fire its pidgeonholed into burst windows with RoP. A world where you could take Arcane Orb and cast Abar more frequently would be more fun and mobile, but thats limited to m+ mainly.

Frost is great for m+, but thats tied into being able to shatter Comet Storm, which only works situationally in raiding. Its main weakness is the lack of a real burst CD, as Thermal Void isn't bursty and is on a long 3m cd (most of the optimal timings in this tier revolve around 2m cds). The other weakness is that the spec just doesn't bring competitive single target damage when you can't shatter Comet Storm. Its among the worst in the game right now.

Fire has a good all-around toolkit (mobility, cleave, execute, strong 2m cd, flame patch is VERY strong if stuff lives), and the 5% buff helped. When you have a good On Use trinket, its ST is a few hundred above Frost, but that's not saying too much. Wish the spec didn't revolve as heavily around having a PVP Badge On Use trinket and/or Balefire. Don't have too many complaints about Fire right now, though the damage isn't spectacular on ST

TLDR: Mage is an asset particularly on Fetid (arcane/fire burst), Zul (slow), Mythrax (since youre benching all your melee), and Ghuun (benching melee again). Meter-wise and from raidbots sims you're right, but it's still a weird tier for parsing. Somebodys gotta be bottom tier, as mage has been overdue. Going forward I do think Arcane needs more cleave, and Frost more ST, even if it came at the cost of Comet Storm damage

Parsing wise though, I wouldn't take mythic Uldir too seriously. It's way too out of the box compared to the last few months of Antorus that people are used to. We've had better tiers though, but your guild still should feel that you're an asset as a ranged and AI buff, at the bare minimum (and hopefully a fun person to play with).

[Lollis]

Are you trying to troll? That's a screen of the top 10 parses WORLD, not some random raid. No one has parsed better than those two "losers" with their "terrible azerite traits"-

Are you a deliberate idiot? Compared to the arcane mages, WHO HAVE THE BEST TRAITS FOR THEM, the Fire mages have bad traits. It doesn't fucking matter how good they are when they are not on equal playing fields.

We are also talking about a parse difference of 6000.

[Alphatorg]

Are you a deliberate idiot? Compared to the arcane mages, WHO HAVE THE BEST TRAITS FOR THEM, the Fire mages have bad traits. It doesn't fucking matter how good they are when they are not on equal playing fields.

We are also talking about a parse difference of 6000.

What's wrong with you? Someone tells you Arcane is the best on spec on Taloc, you say "no fire", someone links you a screenshot that shows Arcane actually outperforming fire (in reality, hard cold facts - not in the fantasies inside your head) and you keep going on about traits.
Top 100 parses consists of literally 85% Arcane, aggregate spec rankings for Taloc have Arcane outpacing Fire (even if it's only slightly) for percentiles above shitstain tier.

Why is it so hard to admit that your claim was wrong?

With that aside, speaking more generally, this is the roughest tier in recent memory for mage, but the spec still has viability with the AI buff, Arcane burst on Fetid, and slows on Zul (just not in multiples beyond Fetid). Beyond that though, yeah you're better off with aff locks this tier. Better off with multiple locks on Mythrax and Ghuun.

Is it really? To me mage feels like a true middle of the pack class. You have a useful spec for every encounter, but aside from early Fetid you don't really do anything crazy. Some guilds run one mage, some guilds run three mages, both is fine - isn't that what balance looks like?

I think NH (before everyone had their frost legendaries and started going wild with double IL) and ToS weren't any better. If it wasn't for ice block utility the same would probably be true for Antorus.

[MrExcelion]

Roughest from a 'parsing' standpoint, but I will not attempt to rate the 'raid viability' of it versus other tiers, but I think its alright. I've raided every tier since Vanilla and I remember the first two weeks of ToT being rough (then Fire got a significant hotfix buff and it became amazing in heroic ilvl with the proper crit), and the start of Cataclysm pre-Arcane buffs/pre-getting a Shard of Woe (you were playing fire and actually running out of mana). And Sunwell when were 300-600 behind on Brutallus (but hey, scorch debuff). Keep in mind though, Mage has had like a overall top tier parsing spec since like forever, so we were due for a tier like this, so me saying roughest doesn't mean much. Plus it means even less since raid viability >>>>>> parsing capability

In terms of raid viability, melee have it the worst on Fetid Mythrax and Ghuun (aka the hardest fights) for this tier

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/ra...5&metric=speed

Just being a ranged alone puts mage in a good spot for the end of mythic at least. Like you said its at least middle of the pack when taking into account the all-important raid viability

edit: I suppose I can comment on last xpac a bit further. Honestly, with bracers EN Fire was fine, but as someone who didn't get bracers or shard, yeah it was in fact awful. I actually swapped to playing Glacial Spike before it was a thing and did top tier damage still though (still had Ice Floes+Shimmer pre 7.1.5 too RIP). Just that everybody was Fire and not really giving it a shot. And yea, when people figured about the double lance thing it was insane #meleemage The 2PC+4pc thing is what propped up Frost quite a bit in both ToS and ATBT.

[mrgreenthump]

Are you a deliberate idiot? Compared to the arcane mages, WHO HAVE THE BEST TRAITS FOR THEM, the Fire mages have bad traits. It doesn't fucking matter how good they are when they are not on equal playing fields.

We are also talking about a parse difference of 6000.

Bad traits? Those all are top 5 traits for Fire and if you take Dagger in the back away(because you really cant expect to be at the back all the time), it's a massive difference for 100 dps to being optimal.

[lockybalboa]

Fire is back! Fuck yeah

[durrtygoodz]

The two fire mages on that list have terrible azerite traits compared to the arcane mages which have the best traits available to them.

One more blaster master would be optimal but the difference would be tiny. It's also quite hard to get two of them on 385 pieces since there's only one in the raid.

[HCLM]

Pretty cool stuff https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/st.../19#dataset=90

At least we're good on Taloc known difficult fight.

Arcane is currently the best spec for progress.

[b1ackbird]

Well, no matter how you slice it - there will be the worst spec. So better it be arcane than anything I play for example.

[Polarthief]

And yet there are almost 19k parses of Arcane Mages in your link and just short of 22k Frost Dk (best spec)....it seems to me a lot of players like playing their Arcane Mage in this content.

Maybe OP meant the worst as in the worst playstyle, because I can definitely agree to that. Arcane is so dreadfully dull.

(yes I know OP didn't mean that, just making dumb jokes)

[Emerald Archer]

Pretty cool stuff https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/st.../19#dataset=90

At least we're good on Taloc known difficult fight.

Best and worst spec (Raid wise) is decided by desirability in a raid. A "Bad spec" isn't one that was desired for most of prog up until the fire buff, and then still great on multiple bosses.

Specs that were actively avoided, and couldn't get raid spots? Those are ones that can actually compete for this. Such as Marksmanship, demonology, and any non-highly desired melee for any relevant boss, like unholy, feral, survival etc.

Funny to see you try and say a spec is the worst in a raid, when it's 10x more desirable than the actual bad specs ?? But yeah, warcraftlog statistics.. Bit of a joke to use that as a measurement of viability.

[Deleted]

Interesting.. That's why I wrote this to evaluate the different spec in a more "fair" manner. Taking the best 500 parses for each spec, on the last 2 weeks, and analyzing their distribution => get rid of outliers that hit lucky streak!

https://nosogame.github.io/mageSpecRankings/

Btw if you have any advice on this, I'll be glad to read it.

TL;DR:
Arcane seems best on Taloc, Fetid & maybe Ghuun
Fire seems best on Vectis & maybe Ghuun (ok also on Zek'voz & Mythraxx)
Frost seems best on Mother, Zek'voz, Zul & Mythraxx

Stop using 90th percentile and all 3 specs are somewhat close in the end

[HCLM]

Interesting.. That's why I wrote this to evaluate the different spec in a more "fair" manner. Taking the best 500 parses for each spec, on the last 2 weeks, and analyzing their distribution => get rid of outliers that hit lucky streak!

https://nosogame.github.io/mageSpecRankings/

Btw if you have any advice on this, I'll be glad to read it.

TL;DR:
Arcane seems best on Taloc, Fetid & maybe Ghuun
Fire seems best on Vectis & maybe Ghuun (ok also on Zek'voz & Mythraxx)
Frost seems best on Mother, Zek'voz, Zul & Mythraxx

Stop using 90th percentile and all 3 specs are somewhat close in the end

You know that these stats are meaningless? Uldir is a raid where top parses have nothing to do with killing the bosses. Lets go with every boss:
Taloc -> Fire and Arcane are great picks here. Arcane for overall ST dmg, and fire for the finisher
Mother -> Fire and Arcane. They have the biggest burst that helps a loot in P3. Frost is high on logs because of their burst on adds which is not even important.
Fetid -> Fire and Arcane. Both specs are great in killing the eggs which is the most important here.
Zek'voz -> Fire is the best here hands down. Great AoE and last phase. Arcane can find a use here for the first orb + bl for some instane burst
Vectis -> All specs are good here.
Zul -> Arcane is the king here, as you want to burst Zul as soon as you can. Frost is taken only for the utility, and Fire is padding.
Mythrax -> Fire/Frost for overall dmg, Arcane if your group have problems with the dps check on adds
Ghuun -> Fire

So like you can see. Arcane is great on all bosses, every encounter has high priority adds that have to be killed quickly, or burst phases where Arcane beats other specs.